BATON ROUGE - After the legislative session, Governor John Bel Edwards signed 179 bills into law. Now, more than a dozen new state laws have taken effect.

One of the most discussed is a bill that calls for harsher penalties for dealing fentanyl. Others regulate smaller issues, like mandating 15 minutes of recess for kids and finally allowing for credit card payments at the Office of Motor Vehicles.

Several of the laws deal with children.

Fathers can now be forced to pay for half of a mother's out-of-pocket pregnancy-related expenses. The law gives mothers two years to file a claim, but they need a paternity test or the father's acknowledgment of paternity.

Louisiana is one of the first states to criminalize deepfake child sexual abuse materials, or AI-assisted pornography. Anyone caught making or possessing AI-generated images which depict a child could face 20 years in prison.

A new law bars minors from checking out books with specific adult content. Library advocates argued that systems for this already exist and said the new law won't change anything.

"Libraries aren't daycare systems. Who's dropping off their kids unaccompanied? If you're dropping off your child unaccompanied at the library, that's your own fault if your child wanders into the adult section," said Amanda Jones of La. Association of School Librarians.

In each public school classroom, signs saying "In God We Trust" are now displayed if the school has funding to do so. 

"At such a time like this, it would be a really wonderful thing for a child, no telling where they come from, to look up and say you know this nation trusts in God, maybe there is one," State Rep. Dodie Horton, (R) Bossier, said.

Nursing home staff crammed 800 residents into a makeshift shelter in Tangipahoa Parish during Hurricane Ida. A new law says nursing homes can have their licenses revoked if their emergency preparedness plan is rejected by the Department of Health.

Another law creates a system for rape kits to be tracked by victims. Across the country, rape kits have gone untested for years. Some cases have gone to court without prosecutors getting the test results, leaving the courts without DNA evidence.

"The low number of convictions, the lack of responsibility on even testing the rape kit, it's not something that Louisiana can feel good about at all," State Senator, Beth Mizell, (R) Tangipahoa, Washington and northern St. Tammany, said.

For a list of bills signed into law, click here and here.