Members of the Smith County chapter of 40 Days for Life, a campaign with a mission to end abortion locally, prayed across the street from the Planned Parenthood facility in Tyler Tuesday. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday for a case out of Mississippi in which the state seeks to uphold its ban on most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, members of a group aimed at ending abortion began a two-day vigil outside Planned Parenthood in Tyler.

Supreme Court justices will hear arguments for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a case that could potentially strike down the 1973 opinion giving women the ability to get an abortion without government intrusion.

The Dobbs v. Jackson case stems from Mississippi seeking to have the state’s ban on most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy upheld by the highest court in the country, according to the Associated Press.

Across the street from the local Planned Parenthood, the Tyler-area group of 40 Days for Life gathered 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday for a two-day campaign of prayer and fasting, community outreach and a peaceful vigil.

The effort will continue during the same hours on Wednesday.

Steven Charles, pastor of Bethesda Church in Lindale, and his wife Camilla Charles were among the roughly dozen attendees who prayed in front of the facility Tuesday afternoon.

“While we’re for taking care of people in need, we’re also standing for life. We’re here to support life and to support the end of legal abortion,” he said. “We’re here to pray, and we’re here on different shifts. In the midst of this, we are all around the nation praying for the end of abortion, and especially Roe v. Wade.”

The Tyler site for Planned Parenthood does not perform abortions; however, it is an abortion referral clinic.

Should the high court overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling could have major impacts for Texas. Last June, Texas joined 11 other states by enacting a measure that automatically bans abortion after Roe is overturned without having to call a special legislative session.

If Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, Steven Charles said he hopes there would be “a cascading, domino effect” of people seeing there are options other than abortion.

“We can save the lives of children. We can help people that are in crisis. We can place those children in families,” he said. “It’ll be life, it’ll be liberty and it’ll be freedom.”

Camilla Charles said there are traumatic effects on women who have had an abortion.

“We just want people to know there’s a lot of other options like adoption and a lot of faith-based but community options,” she said. “We really want women of all ages to not feel that’s their only option.”

She added the final decision will be up to those nine Supreme Court justices.

“So, we’re definitely praying for them, and at this point, it could easily go one way or the other,” she said.

Steven Charles said 40 Days for Life also wants to make sure mothers and people in crisis will be taken care of, and they seek to be champions for adoption.

“America is still a country of democracy and as we stand here today and gather with many other Americans, we’re saying we want our law to change,” he said. “We want our law to be just and as Christians we want our law to be pleasing to God.”

Attendee Marilyn Russell said Tuesday at the vigil that the Supreme Court had no right to rule abortion as constitutional when it wasn’t mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

She is the mother of 40 Days for Life President and CEO Shawn Carney, who began the group in 2007 in the Bryan-College Station area.

The group has now grown to reach 1,000 cities in 63 countries, according to its website.

“It’s a human thing, and everybody should care,” Russell said.