A ballot measure seeking to give constitutional rights to fertilized eggs may rise again after supporters’ hopes were dashed last month. And if not by sheer volume of petition signatures, they’ll sue the state to advance the cause.

Anti-choice activists with Personhood Colorado turned in 46,671 petition signatures Thursday in a last gasp attempt to place the controversial initiative on the Nov. ballot.

However, questions are being raised about the validity of the current effort.

Gualberto Garcia Jones, co-sponsor of the measure, said at a street-side press conference before submitting the most recent petitions to the Colorado Secretary of State that volunteers collected more than two signatures per minute over the entire 15 day period allowed to make up the Feb. petition shortfall. If accurate, it would be an astounding effort that would have required 24-hour circulation drives to reach that level of critical mass.

The superhuman campaign was launched shortly after the Colorado Secretary of State invalidated 15,700 names on the original petition rolls as ineligible voters. State election officials will now review the second round of names. A decision on the validity of the petitions is expected in about 10 days.

The latest round of yet-to-be verified petitions tripled what the group needed to collect and could be added to the 64,000-odd signatures approved last month. If the new petitions pass muster, the personhood amendment will comfortably surpass the required benchmark of 76,047 valid voter signatures and will be placed on the ballot, short any legal challenges.

Opponents of the measure describe it as a unabashed attempt to ban abortion with far reaching consequences for fertility care, embryonic stem cell research and some forms of implantation-inhibiting contraception.

Likewise, legal experts scoff at “personhood” as a strategy for dismantling Roe v Wade protections. Abortion opponents point to the 14th Amendment as a weakness in the court’s decision — though constitutional scholars describe that as a substantial misreading of the precedents supporting the landmark Supreme Court case that unequivocally stated a fetus is not a living person until birth.

The group’s first-in-the-nation attempt in 2008 to codify zygote rights was smacked down by Colorado voters by a 73-27 landslide. The revised constitutional amendment involves only minor tweaking of the previously failed language — substituting the phrase “at the beginning of biological development” for the more politically charged term “conception.”

Leslie Durgin, senior vice president for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains said, “We defeated the same initiative in 2008 by a ratio of 3-to-1 and we’re prepared to defeat this amendment again.”

One of the still unanswered questions is whether the latest petitions were properly prepared for submission following a July 1, 2009 rule change that requires notaries to verify the identity of the petition circulators by citing a state-issued identification card instead of personally vouching for them.

Personhood USA is threatening to sue the Secretary of State for failing to inform the group of the revised certification process.

Keith Mason, co-founder of the tax-exempt organization, said, “Thousands of valid voter signatures were discounted due to new notary requirements that notaries were not aware of.” Mason said the notary handbook doesn’t mention the well-publicized 2009 law that was enacted after repeated allegations of fraud by petition circulators for misleading voters about the intent of another proposed ballot measure to rescind affirmative action.

However, the law is prominently linked at the state elections Web site under “Information for Petition Entities, Circulators and Proponents.” And Secretary of State spokesman Rich Coolidge told Denver ABC television affiliate that the new rules have been printed on page 8 of the petition training guides for the last 18 months.

Mason would not confirm how many of the newly collected signatures may be subject to disqualification over the notary flap.