Louisiana is pursuing a criminal case against another out-of-state doctor accused of mailing abortion pills to a patient in the state, court documents filed this month revealed.

A warrant for the arrest of a California doctor is a rare charge of violating one of the state abortion bans that has taken effect since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed enforcement.

It represents an additional front in a growing legal battle between liberal and conservative states over prescribing abortion medications via telehealth and mailing them to patients.

Pills are the most common way abortions are accessed in the U.S., and are a major reason that, despite the bans, abortion numbers rose last year, according to a report.

A Louisiana woman says she was forced to take abortion drugs

Louisiana said in a court case filed Sept. 19 that it had issued a warrant for a California-based doctor who it says provided pills to a Louisiana woman in 2023.

Both the woman, Rosalie Markezich, and the state attorney’s general, are seeking to be part of a lawsuit that seeks to order drug regulators to bar telehealth prescriptions to mifepristone, one of the two drugs usually used in combination for medication abortions.

In court filings, Markezich says her boyfriend at the time used her email address to order drugs from Dr. Remy Coeytaux, a California physician, and sent her $150, which she forwarded to Coeytaux. She said she had no other contact with the doctor.

She said she did not want to take the pills but felt forced to and said in the filing that “the trauma of my chemical abortion still haunts me” and that it would not have happened if telehealth prescriptions to the drug were off limits.

The accusation builds on a position taken by anti-abortion groups: That allowing abortion pills to be prescribed by phone or video call and filled by mail opens the door to women being coerced to take them.

“Rosalie is bravely representing many woman who are victimized by the illegal, immoral, and unethical conduct of these drug dealers,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement.