Louisiana woman pleads not guilty to a felony in historic abortion case
A Louisiana woman pleads not guilty Tuesday to a felony, after allegedly getting abortion pills from a New York doctor and giving them to her teenage daughter to terminate a pregnancy.
BATON ROUGE, La. — A Louisiana woman pleads not guilty Tuesday to a felony, after allegedly getting abortion pills from a New York doctor and giving them to her teenage daughter to terminate a pregnancy.
The woman’s arraignment is part of a cross-state legal battle that involves what may be the first instance of criminal charges against a doctor accused of sending abortion pills to another state, putting Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban in tension with New York’s shield laws.
In January, a West Baton Rouge grand jury unanimously issued an indictment against the 39-year-old Louisiana woman for criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, which is a felony. The woman has not been publicly identified by The Associated Press to protect the identity of the minor.
The indictment in Louisiana came months after the state became the first to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol — a two-drug regimen that can be used to end pregnancies through the 10th week — as “controlled dangerous substances.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says there is decades of evidence that mifepristone and misoprostol are safe and effective.
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