After unexpected election results, US women's groups Thursday were bracing for a fight over abortion rights and gender equality with the new conservative majority in Congress.
"We now face an anti-choice majority and a new speaker of the House who will threaten to roll back hard-fought progress for women," said Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest women's group in the United States.
Republicans by Wednesday had picked up 60 seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives, well more than the 39 they needed for a majority.
At least 49 of the newcomers to the House are opposed to women having the right to choose to have an abortion, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Republicans also grabbed six more seats in the 100-member Senate but failed to win a majority.
Pro-choice senators still have a slim majority, with two races -- one of which includes a pro-choice woman candidate -- yet to be decided.
O'Neill predicted that the new Republican leadership in the House will take moves that would compromise women's rights.
"They will try to repeal the health care reform law, privatize or cut Social Security, cut funding for family-planning programs, undermine equal marriage initiatives, and try to weaken Roe v. Wade," the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in the United States.
O'Neill warned that soon-to-be speaker of the House, John Boehner, "has made it no secret that he is anti-choice and anti-equal marriage," but vowed to fight him and his conservative phalanx in the House with the help of progressive lawmakers who managed to survive the midterm election bloodbath.