The U.S. Department of Justice filed a petition to stop Texas’s restrictive abortion laws, which prohibit the termination of sex for women as young as six weeks. A U.S. appels court rejected the request.

U.S. Fifth Court of Appeal stated that the law may remain in effect pending further “accelerated” proceedings regarding the prominent legal challenge.

Texas law on abortion, effective Sept. 1, does not allow for exceptions to pregnancies resulting from rape and incest.

The ban is also available to ordinary citizens who enforce it, and they can be awarded at least 10,000 dollars if they succeed in suing someone who provided an abortion following detection of fetal heart activity. The law’s critics claim that this clause allows individuals to be anti-abortion bounty hunters.

The Justice Department argues that women are prevented from exercising the constitutional right to end a pregnancy, as recognized by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade 1973 decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states.

Additionally, the department argued that this law infringes on the ability of the federal government provide services related to abortion.