New York enacted a law on Monday intended to protect the state's doctors from prosecution by other states that have banned abortions when they prescribe and mail out abortion pills.

The case opens a new front in the battle between states that ban abortion and states that support providing abortion anywhere in the country.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a New York doctor indicted on Friday by a Louisiana grand jury for allegedly prescribing abortion pills online to a pregnant minor in the Deep South state, which has one of the strictest near-total abortion bans in the country.