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Mr. Garland said in his statement on Monday that the federal government would beef up its enforcement of a 1994 law designed to protect women from harassment and intimidation as they sought abortions.

“The department will provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack,” Mr. Garland said. “We have reached out to U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and F.B.I. field offices in Texas and across the country to discuss our enforcement authorities.”

In the face of the calls by Democrats for the administration to do more, the White House and the Justice Department declined to say on Tuesday what else they might have in store.

“The White House Counsel’s Office, the Justice Department, the Department of Health and Human Services are continuing to look for ways to expand women’s access to health care,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, also called on Democrats to investigate whether the Texas law was part of a national campaign being waged by conservative groups and funded by unnamed donors that was intended to push certain legislation, like voter suppression laws.

“We have done a rotten job at exposing that,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “We have been negligent, not just weak, in letting this transpire and not doing the work to tell the American public about it.”

The idea of using the prosecutorial powers of the Justice Department to take on the Texas law gained traction this weekend through an opinion essay in The Washington Post by the constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe. The best way for Democrats to protect abortion rights is for Congress to pass a law, Mr. Tribe argued. But he said that Democrats likely do not have enough votes in Congress and warned that the Supreme Court could overturn such a law anyway.