PORT ALLEN — A Louisiana grand jury on Friday indicted a Port Allen mother and a New York doctor, alleging they took part in a mail-order abortion that ended the pregnancy of a Louisiana minor who had looked forward to giving birth.

"She was a minor and ... she was excited," Prosecutor Tony Clayton said outside the West Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse. "She had planned a reveal party. She had wanted to have this baby."

The grand jury alleges Dr. Margaret D. Carpenter of New Paltz, New York, and the Nightingale Medical Clinic she runs mailed an abortion-inducing drug to a Port Allen woman, who then made her daughter take it.

The girl suffered complications while alone as the drug took effect, Clayton said. "She called 911 and an ambulance rushed her to the hospital and they were able to save her life," he said. 

WBRZ is not identifying the local woman charged to conceal the identity of the girl.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe vs. Wade, which had provided a right to abortions under the U.S. Constitution since 1973. Louisiana had a "trigger law" that made most abortions in the state illegal when Roe was set aside in Dobbs vs. Jackson Health.

Clayton said he opted to use the 18th Judicial District grand jury to pursue criminal charges against Carpenter rather than file a civil complaint against her, as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has done.

"To ship a pill from another state is equivalent to me to shipping fentanyl or any other type of drug that ends up in the mouths and stomachs of our minor kids," Clayton said. 

It wasn't immediately clear how far along the pregnancy was, but "you had a fetus, you had developing," Clayton said. "You could optically look and see that this was obviously a baby."

The indictment is believed to be the first in Louisiana over a mail-order abortion.

"It is illegal to send abortion pills into this state and it's illegal to coerce another into having an abortion," Attorney General Liz Murrill said. The grand jury and Clayton did not charge the mother with coercion.

"Whether you are pro-abortion or against it, the bottom line is some child who wanted her baby now doesn't have that baby and this doctor has a date with Louisiana, Louisiana justice," Clayton said.

There was no answer Friday at a number for the clinic and Carpenter in New Paltz.