Texas Republicans are rolling ahead with a controversial bill that seeks to further restrict abortion access in the state, while making it impossible for it to be challenged in state courts, despite Democratic objections.

Senate Bill 2880 advanced through the state Senate and is now heading for a House vote, after being moved Friday out of the Committee on State Affairs, with its chair facing growing pressure ahead of a Saturday deadline.

More than 40 House Republicans sent a letter to state Rep. Ken King, the chair, urging him to move the bill, while some held a last-minute press conference pushing for passage of the abortion bill and other conservative priorities.

Republican state senators wrote in their own letter to King that existing laws were not enough to guard against abortions in the state, mainly due to the continued availability of medicated abortion.

“Texas is in crisis. The tremendous protections afforded to mothers and children by S.B. 8, the Heartbeat Bill (87R), and H.B. 1290, the Trigger Bill (87R), is subverted daily by bad actors who flood our state with dangerous and deadly abortion pills,” they wrote. “This must end.”

Texas is already among the most restrictive states on........

© The Hill