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HOUSTON — Several thousand people in Texas’ largest city rallied for abortion rights on Saturday, one of numerous demonstrations held across the country days after a draft opinion from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked. They were joined by a host of Democratic officials, including former Representative Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor.

The rally in Houston, at Discovery Green, a downtown park, might have been the largest gathering of the protests that were scheduled in more than a dozen cities and communities on Saturday. They varied widely in scale and attendance. A morning event outside a Catholic church in Manhattan drew dozens of people. A demonstration in downtown Detroit featured roughly 200. A rally in Chicago attracted more than a thousand.

Many more protests were planned on Sunday in cities including San Jose, Calif., Kansas City, Mo., Fort Wayne, Ind., Oklahoma City and Orlando, Fla. Next weekend, thousands could gather in Washington for the Women’s March.

In Houston on Saturday, some in attendance took advantage of the rally to turn it into a family outing. Marco Barbato, 35, an engineer, brought his 4-year-old daughter so she could see how democracy worked and witness people standing up for what they believed in, he said.

“It is a woman’s business to do what they wish with their bodies. She needs to know that, and she needs to be heard and speak up herself,” Mr. Barbato said, referring to his daughter.

Another protester, Sara Mielke, who wore a dress made entirely of hangers, said she was hurt and disappointed by the news that Roe could be struck down. “The government should not be getting between women and their doctors when it comes to reproductive health,” she said.

Speaking after the event, Mr. O’Rourke said he had been moved by hearing the personal stories of so many women. “People’s lives are on the line now, and I’m going to do everything in my power to fight for them,” he said after the event. During the rally, he was joined by speakers that included U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas State Senator Carol Alvarado and the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner.

In Detroit, demonstrators met in front of the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse downtown. After listening to speakers for about a half-hour, the group marched through downtown, chanting slogans that included “2-4-6-8, you can’t make us procreate.”

Heather Summers Webb of Oakland County, attending the rally with her 19-year-old daughter, said she has worked in a variety of nursing roles and has always thought that every woman should have a choice. She added that working as an abortion nurse broadened her understanding of the importance of abortion rights.

“I didn’t realize how profound some of the women’s reasons were,” she said. “I didn’t realize how many women show up to an abortion clinic because their resources are already depleted — taking care of themselves, children, aging family members, disabled family members, working multiple jobs — and then there’s just no way that they could have another mouth to feed.” She went on to cite several more obstacles she had seen women face such as a lack of access to prenatal care.

“There are so many reasons and, really, in the end, it’s just up to that woman and her body,” she said. “It really took that point home for me.”

Kess Ballentine, a professor of social work at Wayne State University in Detroit, also said her own experiences had underscored the importance of abortion rights for her.

“I’ve been pro women’s rights since I was a little girl, but I will say that having been through difficult pregnancies opened my eyes to like a new layer of the whole situation,” she said, adding that it was critical for women to have a choice that would help them navigate health issues during pregnancy.

In Chicago, on one of the warmest days in weeks, a large crowd gathered at Federal Plaza and heard speakers including Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, who told the crowd that “politicians do not belong in the doctor’s office, period.”

Greta Powell, an attorney from suburban Oak Park, attended the protest with her husband, mother and two young daughters, 4 and 10 months. She said that even though she felt that Illinois would keep abortion legal, the thought of overturning Roe was extremely worrisome.

“Assuming that the court reverses Roe, my daughters will be growing up with less rights than I had, and that’s very troubling to me,” she said

Donna Lewis, who lives in Atlanta but was in Detroit to visit family for Mother’s Day, said she felt compelled to attend with her 30-year-old son to stand up for others. In 1990, she protested against abortion, but she said she had changed her mind. Ms. Lewis held a sign that read, “I don’t regret my abortion.”

“I had an abortion as a teenager, but after I had children, I realized how much it really is our right to do that,” she said.

Although the crowd was dominated by supporters of abortion rights, a group of about 20 anti-abortion counterprotesters stood across from the plaza and voiced its opposition.

“We believe in protecting the innocent, the voiceless children in the womb,” said Julio Arriola, a member of the Christ Forgiveness Ministries of Chicago. Addressing the fact that his side was greatly outnumbered on Saturday, Mr. Arriola said, “We believe in standing up for righteousness, even if it’s less popular.”

Tensions were higher earlier that morning in Lower Manhattan, when about a dozen members of the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral gathered outside the church and were met by around 75 abortion rights demonstrators.

On the first Saturday of the month, the church members usually walk in an organized procession to a Planned Parenthood clinic a couple of blocks away. But this week, out of safety concerns, some of the members instead decided to station themselves outside the church and behind a fence that separated the church from the street. There, they stood in the rain, singing hymns and praying over their rosaries.

On the other side of the fence, a number of the abortion rights supporters shouted and sang, “Thank God for Abortion.” Some also hung up a green, black and white sign that said, “Anti-Abortion Laws Kill Us.”

One of the protesters, Payal Patel, a resident of Harlem who provides family medicine services, abortions and abortion pills across the city, said that people in New York City were lucky because abortion would remain legal even if Roe were overturned. But she said it was important to teach future generations “that abortion is health care.”

The Rev. Brian A. Graebe, who has been the pastor of the church for the past three years, said he saw the leaked draft of the Supreme Court ruling as a sign of hope.

“We’ve certainly had more than our share of setbacks over the past 50 years on this issue, but it’s something that would be a wonderful step forward for our society,” he said.

LONDON — Six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, no part of the United Kingdom has felt the sting in the tail more than Northern Ireland, where Brexit laid the groundwork for Sinn Fein’s remarkable rise in legislative elections this week.

With almost all of the votes counted on Saturday, Sinn Fein, the main Irish nationalist party, declared victory, racking up 27 of the 90 seats available in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the most of any party in the territory. The Democratic Unionist Party, which represents those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, slipped to second place, with 24 seats.

“Today ushers in a new era which I believe presents us all with an opportunity to reimagine relationships in this society on the basis of fairness, on the basis of equality and on the basis of social justice,” said Michelle O’Neill, the party’s leader who is set to become the region’s first minister.

Though Brexit was not on the ballot, it cast a long shadow over the campaign, particularly for the D.U.P., the flagship unionist party that has been at the helm of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government since it was created by the Good Friday peace agreement nearly a quarter-century ago.

Brexit’s legacy rippled through local elections across the British Isles: In London, where anti-Brexit voters turned Conservative Party bastions over to the Labour Party, and in the “red wall,” England’s pro-Brexit rust belt regions, where the Conservatives held off Labour. But in Northern Ireland, Brexit’s effect was decisive.

For all of the history of Sinn Fein’s victory — the first for a party that calls for a united Ireland and has vestigial ties to the Irish Republican Army — the election results are less a breakthrough for Irish nationalism than a marker of the demoralization of unionist voters, the disarray of their leaders, and an electorate that put more of a priority on economic issues than sectarian struggles.

Much of that can be traced to Brexit.

“Coming to terms with the loss of supremacy is an awful lot for unionism to process,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. “But the unionists really managed to shoot themselves in the foot.”

The D.U.P. struggled to hold together voters who are divided and angry over the North’s altered status — it is the only member of the United Kingdom that shares a border with the Republic of Ireland, a member of the European Union.

That hybrid status has complicated life in many ways, most notably in necessitating a complex trading arrangement, the Northern Ireland Protocol, which imposes border checks on goods flowing to Northern Ireland from mainland Britain. Many unionists complain that it has driven a wedge between them and the rest of the United Kingdom by effectively creating a border in the Irish Sea.

The D.U.P. endorsed the protocol, only to turn against it later and pull out of the last Northern Ireland government in protest. Unionist voters punished it for that U-turn, with some voting for a more hard-line unionist party and others turning to a nonsectarian centrist party, the Alliance, which also scored major gains.

The success of the Alliance, political analysts said, suggests that Northern Ireland may be moving beyond the sectarian furies of the past and a binary division between unionists and nationalists.

Even Sinn Fein, which for decades was associated with the bloodstained struggle for Irish unity, said little about the topic during the campaign, keeping the focus on bread-and-butter issues like jobs, the cost of living and the overburdened health care system.

With the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday accord approaching, some analysts said it was time to revisit the North’s political structure.

The agreement ended decades of sectarian strife by, among other things, creating an open border on the island. But it also balanced political power between the nationalists and unionists, at a time when the predominantly Protestant unionists were the majority and the predominantly Catholic nationalists were a restive minority.

Demographic trends have changed that: The faster-growing Catholic population is poised to overtake the Protestants. While the link between religion and political identification is not automatic — there are some Catholics who favor staying in the United Kingdom — the trends favored the nationalists, even before Brexit.

As the largest party, Sinn Fein will have the right to name a first minister, the symbolic top official in the government. But the final seat count between nationalists and unionists is likely to be close, since the two other unionist parties won a handful of seats, and the one other party that designates itself as nationalist, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, performed poorly.

As the runner-up, the D.U.P. is entitled to name a deputy first minister, who functions as a de facto equal. Even so, it has not committed to taking part in a government with a Sinn Fein first minister. And it has threatened to boycott until the protocol is scrapped, a position that draws scant support beyond its hard-core base.

“There’s fragmentation within parties that are trying to reflect a more secular Northern Ireland,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast. “That fits uncomfortably with the architects of the peace agreement. There’s no dominant group now. We’re all minorities.”

In this more complex landscape, Professor Hayward said, Sinn Fein was likely to govern much as it campaigned, by focusing on competent management and sound policies rather than mobilizing an urgent campaign for Irish unity.

Ms. O’Neill, the Sinn Fein leader in Northern Ireland, hailed what she called “the election of a generation.” But she said little about Irish unity. Sinn Fein’s overall leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said this week that she could foresee a referendum on Irish unification within a decade, and possibly “within a five-year time frame.”

For the unionists, the path out of the wilderness is harder to chart. Professor Hayward said the D.U.P. faced a difficult choice in whether to take part in the next government.

If it refuses, it would be violating the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. It would also risk further alienating voters, particularly “soft unionists,” who have little patience for continued paralysis in the government.

But if it joins the next government, that brings its own perils. The D.U.P. swung to the right during the campaign to fend off a challenge from the more hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice party. It has made its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol an article of faith.

“There may be serious talks now about unionist unity, but there will be no government unless the protocol goes,” said David Campbell, chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council, which represents a group of pro-union paramilitary groups that vehemently oppose the protocol.

That puts the D.U.P.’s future out of its hands, since the decision to overhaul the protocol lies with the British government. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signaled that he is open to doing that — especially if it would facilitate a new Northern Ireland government — but he must weigh other considerations.

Overturning the protocol would raise tensions with the European Union and even risk igniting a trade war, a stark prospect at a time when Britain already faces soaring inflation and warnings that its economy might fall into recession later this year.

It would also antagonize the United States, which has warned Mr. Johnson not to do anything that would jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement.

“The Biden administration has made it very clear that the protocol is not a threat to the Good Friday Agreement,” said Bobby McDonagh, a former Irish ambassador to Britain. “It actually helps support the Good Friday Agreement. That will act as a sort of constraint on Johnson.”

PARIS — Beneath the chandeliers of the Elysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron was inaugurated on Saturday for a second five-year term as president of France, vowing to lead more inclusively and to “act first to avoid any escalation following the Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

In a sober speech lasting less than ten minutes, remarkably short for a leader given to prolixity in his first term, Mr. Macron seemed determined to project a new humility and a break from a sometimes abrasive style. “Rarely has our world and our country confronted such a combination of challenges,” he said.

Mr. Macron, 44, held off the far-right nationalist leader Marine Le Pen to win re-election two weeks ago with 58.55 percent of the vote. It was a more decisive victory than polls had suggested but it also left no doubt of the anger and social fracture he will now confront.

Where other countries had ceded to “nationalist temptation and nostalgia for the past,” and to ideologies “we thought left behind in the last century,” France had chosen “a republican and European project, a project of independence in a destabilized world,” Mr. Macron said.

He has spent a lot of time in recent months attempting to address that instability, provoked above all by Russia’s war in Ukraine. His overtures have borne little fruit. Still, Mr. Macron made clear that he would fight so that “democracy and courage prevail” in the struggle for a “a new European peace and a new autonomy on our continent.”

The president is an ardent proponent of greater “strategic autonomy,” sovereignty and independence for Europe, which he sees as a precondition for relevancy in the 21st century. This quest has brought some friction with the United States, largely overcome during the war in Ukraine, even if Mr. Macron seems to have more faith in negotiating with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia than President Biden has.

Mr. Macron gave his trademark wink to his wife Brigitte, 69, as he arrived in the reception hall of the presidential palace, where about 500 people, including former Presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, were gathered.

Laurent Fabius, the president of the Constitutional Council, formally announced the results of the election. A general presented Mr. Macron with the elaborate necklace of Grandmaster of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction.

Guests came from all walks of life, ranging from the military to the theater. But in a sign of the distance France has to travel in its quest for greater political diversity, the attendees included a lot of white men in dark blue suits and ties, the near universal uniform of the products of the country’s elite schools.

The president then went out to the gardens, where he listened to a 21-gun salute fired from the Invalides on the other side of the Seine. No drive down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées followed, in line with the ceremony for the last re-elected president, Jacques Chirac, two decades ago.

Mr. Macron will travel to Strasbourg on Monday to celebrate “Europe Day,” commemorating the end of World War II in Europe, which in contrast to Mr. Putin’s May 9 “Victory Day” is dedicated to the concept of peace through unity on the Continent.

Addressing the European Parliament, Mr. Macron will set out plans for the 27-nation European Union to become an effective, credible and cohesive power. He will then travel to Berlin that evening to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a sign of the paramount importance of Franco-German relations.

Sometimes referred to as the “president of the rich” because of the free-market reforms that initiated his presidency (and despite the state’s “whatever-it-takes” support for furloughed workers during the pandemic), Mr. Macron promised a “new method” of governing, symbolized by renaming his centrist party “Renaissance.”

Dismissing the idea that his election was a prolongation of his first term, Mr. Macron said “a new people, different from five years ago, has entrusted a new president with a new mandate.”

He vowed to govern in conjunction with labor unions and all representatives of the cultural, economic, social and political worlds. This would stand in contrast to the top-down presidential style he favored in his first term that often seemed to turn Parliament into a sideshow. The institutions of the Fifth Republic, as favored by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, tilt heavily toward presidential authority.

Ms. Le Pen’s strong showing revealed a country angry over falling purchasing power, rising inflation, high gasoline prices, and a sense, in blighted urban projects and ill-served rural areas, of abandonment. Mr. Macron was slow to wake up to this reality and now appears determined to make amends. He has promised several measures, including indexing pensions to inflation beginning this summer, to demonstrate his commitment.

However, Mr. Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 65 from 62, albeit in gradual stages, appears almost certain to provoke social unrest in a country where the left is proposing that people be allowed to retire at 60.

“Let us act to make our country a great ecological power through a radical transformation of our means of production, of our way of traveling, of our lives,” Mr. Macron declared. During his first term, his approach to leading France toward a post-carbon economy was often hesitant, infuriating the left.

This month, left-wing forces struck a deal to unite for next month’s parliamentary election under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left politician who came just short of beating out Ms. Le Pen for a spot in the presidential election runoff. Mr. Mélenchon has made no secret of his ambition to become prime minister, and Mr. Macron no secret of his doubts about this prospect.

The bloc — including Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Greens — represents an unusual feat for France’s chronically fractured left and a new challenge to Mr. Macron. He will be weakened if he cannot renew his current clear majority in Parliament.

The creation of the new Renaissance Party and an agreement announced on Friday with small centrist parties constituted Mr. Macron’s initial answer to this changed political reality.

Mr. Macron’s first major political decision will likely be the choice of a new prime minister to replace Jean Castex, the incumbent. The president is said to favor the appointment of a woman to lead the government into the legislative elections.

He will not make the decision until after his second term formally begins next Saturday.

Constant Méheut and Adèle Cordonnier contributed reporting from Paris.

I got together this week with an old friend I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. Before meeting up, I was seized with a now-familiar apprehension. Would we find our old dynamic? Or would we sit across from one another awkwardly, unable to reclaim the rhythms and repartee that used to come so easily?

Only after the reunion went off without a hitch did I realize that I’d feared that if we hadn’t regained our groove, this could have been our last meeting for a while.

Perhaps it’s the clarity that comes from enduring a difficult period, but I’ve noticed, in myself and others, a diminishing tolerance for uncomfortable or unfulfilling social interactions. Seeing my old friend was thrilling. It felt nutrient-dense, almost like our connection was refueling my personality. But I’ve also experienced the opposite: a quick drink with an acquaintance that feels unduly exhausting.

My colleague Catherine Pearson spoke to experts to determine how many friends a person needs in order to stave off loneliness. (A 2010 meta-analysis found that loneliness is “as harmful to physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”) While no consensus emerged on an optimal number, Catherine did find that more isn’t always better: “Spending time with friends you feel ambivalent about — because they’re unreliable, critical, competitive or any of the many reasons people get under our skin — can be bad for your health.”

Our time and attention are valuable and finite, and we’re in control of what we do with them. We forget this sometimes. We reflexively say yes to invitations because we happen to be free. We go to events out of a vague sense of obligation. We say, “Let’s meet for drinks,” because it’s socially easier than just saying, “Take care.”

In “The Writing Life,” Annie Dillard writes: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” It’s an encouragement to live with intention. It’s good wisdom to keep in mind when deciding whom we spend our time with as well.

How are you spending your days? Let me know.

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WEEKENDS ARE FOR …

🍿 Movies: An Argentine heist thriller is among our international streaming picks.

🎧 Podcasts: Six that go deeper on news and history.

🖼 Art: Fairs in New York include Tefaf, for former museum works, and NADA, showcasing painting and ceramics.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Sheet-Pan Pancakes

Here’s a confession: I hate having breakfast in bed. All those toast crumbs, syrup drips and tea spills make me too tense to enjoy it — on Mother’s Day or any other morning. But I do love it when my family makes me breakfast. So I’ve put in a request for Jerrelle Guy’s terrific sheet-pan chocolate chip pancakes. This easy, satisfying recipe has become a favorite in our house, with two tiny tweaks. Instead of baking the batter in one large sheet pan, we divide it across two smaller, quarter-sheet pans (measuring 9-by-13 inches) so there are more crispy edges. It’s a tip pinched from the recipe notes, and it works. The second is nixing the chocolate chips, because that leaves more room for loads of softened butter, blueberries and a downpour of maple syrup. (Want more satisfying recipes? Check out my column this week.)

REAL ESTATE

The Kentucky Derby: Grab your fanciest hat and mix some mint juleps: It’s Derby Day. The mile-and-a-quarter horse race is referred to as “the most exciting two minutes in sports,” and the winner gets a shot at horse racing’s premiere prize, the Triple Crown. For many, though, the party is the main draw. Coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern today on NBC, with the race set for 6:57 p.m.

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