An attorney for a campaign to overturn Missouri’s near-total abortion ban told the state Supreme Court on Tuesday that the amendment should stay on the Nov. 5 ballot, arguing against a Cole County judge’s ruling.

The court is weighing whether to remove the amendment, called Amendment 3, from the ballot, a major decision that will decide whether voters have the chance to overturn the ban this year. The amendment at issue would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

Chuck Hatfield, an attorney for the campaign, argued against Cole County Judge Christopher Limbaugh’s finding on Friday that the amendment did not adequately describe the existing state laws that would be changed by the abortion rights amendment.

“Constitutional amendments … do not repeal statutes ever,” Hatfield told the court on Tuesday. He said that the amendment does not expressly repeal state laws and that Limbaugh’s ruling was unprecedented.

Tuesday’s roughly 30-minute hearing centered on whether to uphold Limbaugh’s ruling that the measure was legally insufficient. The court is likely to rule later on Tuesday amid a tight 5 p.m. deadline before ballots have to be finalized.

Limbaugh’s ruling was in favor of a lawsuit brought last month by two Republican lawmakers and an anti-abortion activist.

As the oral arguments unfolded, a crowd of anti-abortion activists hovered around the steps of the state Supreme Court building in Jefferson City. They prayed and held signs that read “FOLLOW THE LAW” and “NO ON 3.”

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney representing the Republican lawmakers and the anti-abortion activist, argued that the amendment violated state law and should be removed from the ballot.

Martin, who works for the conservative law firm Thomas More Society, said the wording of the amendment “does not reveal, on its face, what it’s doing.” She claimed that it would mislead voters.

At one point during the hearing, Judge W. Brent Powell appeared skeptical of some of the case law cited by the attorneys against the amendment.

“I’ve not found any cases that analyzed whether and when there was a constitutional provision that may conflict with the statute,” Powell said.

Another focus of Tuesday’s hearing centered on an attempt by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, to unilaterally remove the amendment from the Nov. 5 ballot. Ashcroft sent a letter to the abortion rights campaign on Monday claiming to have rejected it after Limbaugh’s ruling.

Hatfield excoriated Ashcroft’s move and asked the court to hold him in contempt.

“It’s open contempt for your authority,” Hatfield told the judges. “It’s open contempt for the rule of law. It’s open contempt for the proper administration of justice to tell the public that he’s going to take it off the ballot, even though we’re here this morning having this discussion.”

Joshua Divine, the solicitor general of Missouri who defended Ashcroft, argued that Ashcroft was never under any court orders that barred him from removing the measure from the ballot.

Powell also questioned that argument, saying that state law gives Ashcroft the authority to certify the measure for the ballot — not to decertify it.

Tuesday’s likely decision comes after the abortion rights campaign, called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, had campaigned for months across the state. The coalition of abortion rights groups raised millions of dollars and collected signatures from more than 380,000 voters to place the measure on the ballot.

The proposed constitutional amendment would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution but also give lawmakers some room to regulate the procedure after fetal viability.

The proposal defines fetal viability as the point in a pregnancy when a health care professional decides, based on the facts of the situation, “there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside of the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”

After Tuesday’s hearing, Martin told reporters that she felt that voters would not approve the amendment if they knew of its full effect.

“I think if people understood its effects, no one would vote for it,” she said. Martin was flanked by two of the Republican plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman from Arnold and Rep. Hannah Kelly from Mountain Grove.

But Tori Schafer, the lead attorney representing the abortion rights campaign, told reporters that the state Supreme Court should reject Limbaugh’s ruling.

“The trial court’s decision, siding with politicians, threatens to grind our system of constitutional initiative petition to a halt at the last minute, leaving in its wake the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters,” she said.

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