The Louisiana mother charged with “criminal abortion” for providing her minor daughter with pills to end her pregnancy pled not guilty in her first court appearance on Tuesday.

The criminal prosecution of 39-year-old Ashley Lights marks a new escalation in the state’s fight to end abortion access following the fall of Roe v. Wade, and is likely to be a watershed moment for reproductive rights in the US. Lights, from Port Allen, is thought to be the first woman to ever be charged with a felony indictment for obtaining abortion pills by mail.

Lights was arraigned on the charge of “criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs,” NOLA.com reported. Her next court appearance for a pretrial hearing is scheduled for May 5.

The indictment against Lights states that she “knowingly did cause an abortion to occur” on April 5, 2024. The state also charged Dr. Margaret “Maggie” Carpenter, a New York state-based doctor, for providing Lights with the pills by mail. In Louisiana, abortion is completely banned even in cases of rape or incest, although there are exceptions if the fetus is not expected to survive the pregnancy or to protect the health or life of the mother.

Carpenter, who was charged along with her practice Nightingale Medical PC, is the co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), an advocacy organization that provides information and support for doctors who want to provide women in banned states with abortion pills. After she was charged, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stated that she would fight any attempt to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, adding the state’s Shield Law protects her right to provide care to women outside of New York.

“Louisiana has changed their laws, but that has no bearing on the laws here in the state of New York,” Hochul said. “I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana. Not now, not ever.”

In an interview last month, ACT’s co-founder Julie Kay told Glamour that Louisiana’s decision to charge Carpenter will not stop them from providing women in any region with the reproductive care they need.

“These are human rights that transcend state borders,” she said. “We really need to address the human rights and public health crisis that’s going on right now in many places in our country where there just isn’t access to these basic services.”