When Andrea Gallegos arrived Friday at the Alamo Women's Reproductive Services clinic in San Antonio, Texas, 25 patients were scheduled for abortion services. Then the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the constitutional right to abortion brought the clinic's work to a grinding halt.

Gallegos and her father, a physician at the center, had to break the news to patients who had traveled from across the state and neighboring Oklahoma: The clinic had to stop providing abortions.

The waiting room erupted with screams and cries. One patient angrily insisted on getting abortion care, unable to accept the high court's ruling. Nearby sat another patient, a 13-year-old girl.

"It was completely devastating," Gallegos, who works as an executive administrator at an affiliated clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told USA TODAY Saturday. "You feel really helpless. These services are safe and easy, and we have physicians qualified to offer this care. So being forced to turn people down is heartbreaking."