Lorena O'Neil, Louisiana Illuminator

A Baton Rouge-area grand jury indicted a New York doctor and a Louisiana mother Friday on felony charges for allegedly providing an illegal abortion with drugs obtained through the mail.

It is the first criminal case of its kind in the country since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which triggered Louisiana’s strict abortion ban.

Dr. Margaret Carpenter, her company, Nightingale Medical, and the mother of the minor in question were all indicted in the 18th Judicial District Court. The Illuminator is not identifying the mother in order to protect the minor’s identity. The news was first reported by WAFB-TV....

NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans health department has developed a new online tool to help doctors and patients identify pharmacies that stock misoprostol in Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

The initiative comes after the department was tasked with studying access to the pregnancy care pill after new state law reclassified misoprostol and mifepristone as controlled substances. The drugs were targeted because they can also be used for medication abortion, but both have other medical uses.

Misoprostol in particular is regularly used for reproductive care procedures such as miscarriage, IUD insertion and postpartum hemorrhage. ...

When a woman starts bleeding out after labor, every second matters. But soon, under a new state law, Louisiana doctors might not be able to quickly access one of the most widely used life-saving medications for postpartum hemorrhage.

The Louisiana Illuminator spoke with several doctors across the state that voiced extreme concern about how the rescheduling of misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance will impact inpatient care at hospitals. Misoprostol is prescribed in a number of medical scenarios — it’s an essential part of reproductive health care that can be used during emergencies, as well as for miscarriage treatment, labor induction, or intrauterine device (IUD) insertion.