Inside social media’s illicit abortion trade – where a late termination costs £350
It’s taken less than 10 minutes to find someone willing to sell me abortion pills.
Dr Jane* tells me she is based in Dubai but assures me the medication will arrive in the UK in a matter of days. How pregnant you are doesn’t matter – she provides pills as late as eight months.
*Warning: This article contains some material readers may find disturbing*
But I am not in the late stages of pregnancy, and this is not the depths of the dark web we are messaging on,
This is Facebook and I’ve told Dr Jane I’m a journalist. I found her within minutes of searching for abortion pills on the site.
In the last two years, six women have faced trial in Britain for allegedly illegally procuring their own abortions, compared to just three convictions between 1861 and 2022.
In Britain, abortions are free on the NHS with pills used up to 10 weeks and when COVID hit, these were made available by post.
Medical (using pills) and surgical abortions can be performed up to 24 weeks. After this, abortions can only be performed in a limited number of circumstances, such as if the mother’s life is at risk.
Abortions have risen to the highest number on record in England and Wales, with 251,377 taking place in 2022. Abortion provider MSI Reproductive Choices said it believes pressures due to the cost-of-living crisis combined with a lack of access to contraception through stretched NHS services are both “playing a bigger role” in this.
In 2023, Carla Foster was jailed for lying to the Pills by Post scheme and taking abortion pills at 32 weeks pregnant. She spent a month in prison before an appeal moved her sentence to a suspended one.
But despite the increased availability of pills on the NHS through such schemes, abortion medication is still being sold on social media sites to people without a prescription.
Using pills bought online to abort a pregnancy is illegal under the UK’s 1861 abortion law – half of the women who faced trial since 2022 had acquired them this way.
Found within a few clicks, the pills are sold by people claiming to be doctors, but whose credentials are almost impossible to verify.
Dr Jane’s profile picture is of a smiling woman with a stethoscope around her neck – but that image is actually taken from the website of a retina specialist in Florida.
The fake Dr Jane told me via Messenger that she is a nurse in Dubai and smuggles the pills out of the hospital where she works.
For an early-stage pregnancy, it is £150. Anything above six months costs £300.
Pills can be taken as late as eight months, she says, and sends graphic images of foetuses claiming to have helped abort them. Their tiny features are visible and veined, and they are clearly dead. But whether she did help abort them is difficult to know.
A medical expert who looked at the images for me said it is impossible to tell if they were generated by AI or at what stage the miscarriages occurred. But they said they would question the credibility of anyone who sent images like these as “proof”.
“Abortion is a woman’s right. It shouldn’t be illegal,” Dr Jane says. No woman, she claims, has ever died from pills she has sold.
Eventually, she stops answering my questions and when I go to message her a week later, her account is gone.
“Dr Jane” is not an anomaly. When her account disappears, there are still dozens of others to choose from.
Prices for a pack of pills vary from £190 to more than £300 – although one seller on Telegram says I can bulk buy 10 “abortion kits” for £575 if I am interested in selling them.
In contrast, the pills are actually “very cheap” to buy direct from the manufacturer for NHS and medical providers, one gynaecologist tells me. One costs approximately 17p per tablet and the other is £10.14 per tablet.
In one Facebook group, a woman posts about needing help. Within minutes, there are multiple comments from sellers offering advice and pills. Some sellers openly post WhatsApp numbers they use to deal directly with buyers.
After I join one of these groups, I receive a message from Layla*.
Layla’s Facebook picture comes from Pinterest. With red hair, lurid eyeshadow, and black-ringed lips, it gives her account a dark feel.
I ask what she would do for someone who was over the UK’s legal limit.
Layla tells me she has done this before, that aborting after 24 weeks is going to be “painful”.
“You are going to push a baby out,” she says.
She claims to have helped one woman (not in the UK) who was 29 weeks pregnant.
Buying abortion pills from her would cost £358 as, like with Dr Jane, the price rises the later a woman is in her pregnancy. The money is paid via GCash, a Filipino payment service, which suggests that is where she is based but she claims to ship pills all around the world.
“I have a lot of clients who went through the process and they all come out successful and free,” Layla says. “No one has ever died. No one was brought to the hospital.”
But while Layla tries to paint it as low-risk, multiple qualified doctors told me that late, at-home abortions can be deeply traumatic and high risk.
“Dr Jane” also includes a package of injections in her “abortion kit” – these are sometimes used to prevent bleeding, but this form of medication can be dangerous for home use, particularly for women with high blood pressure.
A leading gynaecologist campaigning to change the abortion law, Dr Jonathan Lord, says the trauma goes beyond just the physical process, “which obviously is very traumatic”.
“The trauma is why are they doing this in the first place? To be in a situation where they’re trying get pills illegally at six months pregnant, something calamitous must have happened to their life.”
Layla is vocal when she tells me her reasons for selling the pills.
“The world needs to know that a woman’s body belongs to her and not the government,” she says.
When I tell her about the rising number of women facing trial in the UK as a result of procuring abortion pills (both from the NHS and online), she tells me she knows what she does is illegal: “But that’s not the whole story.”
Abortion at any stage is illegal in the Philippines – anyone who performs one faces six years in prison under the country’s penal code, while women who undergo the procedure face between two and six years in jail.
She started selling pills after using them herself. She already had children and was struggling financially telling me: “Our life is hard”.
Layla was 18 weeks pregnant when she finally bought her own abortion pills, because she needed time to save the money.
The woman she bought them from then offered her the chance to resell them. She now gets paid $30 (£24) for every woman she “assists”. In the last two weeks, she says she has sold pills to 14 people around the world – although none in the UK.
Layla never handles the pills herself. “There’s my… you could call her my boss. I send orders to her, and she sends those orders to the shipper.”
She says she is one of seven women working under her “boss”.
Adverts for abortion pills can be found on social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok and Telegram, but they are particularly easy to locate on the Meta platforms. It takes just a few keywords to throw up several groups and posts from sellers.
On Instagram, sellers post infographics about abortion and encourage people to private message them, or link to Telegram chats posting pictures and prices of pills. One post details how to avoid detection, with advice including making a new email address to order pills and turning off location tracking.
These sellers are “unscrupulous opportunists”, says Louise McCudden, a spokesperson for charity MSI.
McCudden believes companies, like Meta, should take responsibility for allowing the trade to continue on their platforms.
“When global social media companies refuse to properly regulate their billion-dollar platforms, it leaves vulnerable women at the mercy of scammers, crooks, and frauds,” she adds.
“Ironically, it is often fear of prosecution which causes women in vulnerable circumstances to feel they must rely on unregulated suppliers rather than accessing care within the NHS.”
Read more: What are the UK’s abortion laws and punishments for breaking them?
Venny Ala-Siurua is the executive director of Women on Web (WoW) – a non-profit online abortion service that sends abortion medication worldwide, legally providing pills to women up to 12 weeks.
WoW said it used to receive five requests every day from women in the UK, but this rapidly dropped to almost zero when the NHS introduced Pills by Post.
But Venny says “these [illegal] sellers operate very openly”.
WoW experiences a different problem and struggles with the Facebook algorithm not being able to distinguish between their content and that of these illegal sellers.
Venny herself has been permanently banned from Facebook and the site often takes down WoW’s own abortion-focused content for violating the company’s “community rules”.
“We have a team almost full-time trying to negotiate with Meta to get our content back up,” she says.
When asked about this, and Sky News’s findings, Meta says: “We want our platforms to be a place where people can access reliable information about health services such as abortion, advertisers can promote health services, and everyone can discuss and debate public policies in this space.
“Content about reproductive health must follow our rules, including those on pharmaceutical drugs and misinformation.”
Meta said it had removed violating content brought to its attention.
Telegram and TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
An amendment by Labour MP Diana Johnson to the Criminal Justice Bill would have stopped anyone facing prosecution for ending their own pregnancy in England and Wales.
However, in the wake of the general election announcement, discussions on the bill have been shelved following an early dissolution of Parliament.
Catherine Robinson, from Right to Life UK, said Sky News’s findings of the availability of abortion pills on social media were “extremely disturbing”.
And there is little to stop these online sellers, who paint their dangerous trade as almost heroic.
In reality, it is their failure to acknowledge the hazards of facilitating late-term abortions that is putting the lives of the very women they claim to help at risk.
*Names have been changed.
UK
Child Q: Two Met Police officers committed gross misconduct over strip search of 15-year-old schoolgirl
Two Metropolitan Police officers committed gross misconduct during the strip search of a 15-year-old schoolgirl wrongly suspected of possessing cannabis, a misconduct hearing has found.
PCs Kristina Linge, Victoria Wray, and Rafal Szmydynski conducted the search of the black girl, known as Child Q, with no appropriate adult present at a school in Hackney, east London, in 2020.
Scotland Yard apologised, and the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, described the case as “shocking” after details of the incident emerged in 2022.
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From March 2022 – Child Q: ‘Black girls should feel safe in school’
PCs Linge, Wray and Szmydynski suspected the girl was in possession of cannabis, but the police watchdog later determined no drugs were found in her bags or outer clothing.
At a police misconduct hearing in London today, Linge and Szmydytnski were found to have committed gross misconduct. They could potentially be dismissed when the sanctions are decided.
Wray was cleared of gross misconduct, but found to have committed misconduct.
The panel found she became involved in a “situation where the decision had been decided already”.
The case of Child Q drew outrage when it first came to light in March 2022 and sparked protests.
In March 2022 crowds waved banners and placards reading ‘protect black kids’ and ‘shame on you’
The officers had been accused of treating Child Q differently due to her race, but Commander Jason Prins, chair of the misconduct panel, said: “We do not draw any inference that race was an effective cause of this incident.”
The panel found concerns about drugs and potential gang involvement were initially raised by school staff.
“Like many cases where stop and search is used, here the subject of the search was identified to police officers by other professionals rather than being by officers in the street,” Commander Prins added.
He said the problem was with the decision to conduct the strip search in the first place, finding it was “unnecessary” and “disproportionate”.
“There should never have been a strip search in these circumstances,” he said, accepting Child Q found it “humiliating and degrading”.
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The panel did not find any officer breached professional behaviour standards relating to equality and diversity, or honesty and integrity.
During the misconduct case, the three officers gave evidence, and each said they were not influenced by subconscious bias.
Luke Ponte, for Linge, said they happened to be “three immigrant officers” who were “trying to do their best to their adopted country” as they were seeking to solve a problem.
Mr Ponte said: “These officers must not bear the entire weight of Child Q where there has been wider dysfunction as to how this came about.”
Breaches of the Met’s standards of professional behaviour found to amount to gross misconduct can lead to dismissal or a final written warning, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
A fourth officer will face a disciplinary meeting at a later date relating to no appropriate adult being present during the search. This is separate from this misconduct hearing, and it’s a lower level of discipline.
Commander Kevin Southworth, on behalf of the force, said in a statement after the verdict: “The experience of Child Q should never have happened and was truly regrettable.
“We have sincerely apologised to Child Q since this incident happened. Again, I am deeply sorry to Child Q and her family for the trauma that we caused her, and the damage this incident caused to the trust and confidence Black communities across London have in our officers.
“While the officers involved did not act correctly, we acknowledge there were organisational failings. Training to our officers around strip search and the type of search carried out on Child Q was inadequate, and our oversight of the power was also severely lacking.
“This left officers, often young in service or junior in rank, making difficult decisions in complex situations with little information, support or clear resources to help their decision-making.
“What happened to Child Q was a catalyst for change, both for the Met and for policing nationally.
“While we should not have needed an incident such as Child Q to check our approach, it has absolutely led us to improving our processes and significantly reducing the number of these types of searches carried out.
“It’s crucial we get this right to ensure the impact on young people is minimised as far as possible.
“Sadly, we know there are children in London being exploited to carry drugs and weapons for others as well as involved in criminality, so these types of searches have to remain within police powers. The work we have done since Child Q means we now have the right safeguards in place.”
Hours after giving birth, with her son rushed away to a high dependency unit, as she lay broken and bleeding, Morgan Joines overheard a midwife blaming her.
Her son had been born with wet lung after an emergency and traumatic caesarean section.
“I overheard [the midwife] tell a student nurse I was the reason my son was ill, because I was too lazy to push,” she told Sky News.
“I was broken. I genuinely believed for ages afterwards that I had failed my son.
“I thought I was the reason he was ill.”
Her son was born at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, part of the Oxford University’s Hospital Trust. Morgan is one of more than 500 families who say they have been harmed by maternity care at the Trust.
On Monday, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, announced a “rapid” national investigation into NHS maternity services.
A taskforce, chaired by Mr Streeting and made up of experts and bereaved families, will first investigate up to ten of the most concerning maternity and neonatal units.
And campaigners – calling themselves the Families Failed by OUH Maternity Services – are calling for Oxford to be on that initial list.
Have you been affected? Contact the Sky News health team at NHSStories@sky.uk.
‘I thought I was going to die’
The unit was rated “requires improvement” in its last inspection by the government’s watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, in April 2023.
The CQC flagged issues around maintaining patient dignity, and said medicines were not always safely stored and managed. The unit did not manage the control of infection consistently it said, and wards were not always kept clean.
One mum told the campaign group she thought she was going to die after being left alone while in labour and denied pain relief.
Another said she is reluctant to consider having another child and feels a “profound loss of trust in the NHS”.
Trust to meet campaign group
Yvonne Christley, Chief Nursing Officer at OUH, said she apologised “for not being able to respond in detail about individual patient cases”.
“We regret any instance where we fail to provide the service that women and their families should expect. When this happens, we make every effort to review individual cases to understand what went wrong and how we can improve.”
She said the trust “make every effort” to keep women and families informed of what action it has taken, and said it is committed to maintaining an open dialogue with community groups.
“The Trust has agreed to meet with the campaign group and is eager to collaborate with them to implement the necessary changes and restore confidence in our services. These meetings are currently being scheduled.”
Caesarean sections account for approximately 40% of all births at OUH.
A ‘degrading strip wash’
A few hours after Morgan’s son had been whisked away to another part of the hospital, a nurse tried to force her to take oramorph, a high strength painkiller, she said.
When she declined to take the drug, having previously had a bad reaction, she said staff “claimed I was being difficult”.
“[They said] to just take the meds and get it over and done with.”
Morgan Joines overheard a midwife blaming her for her son’s condition when he was born
When Morgan was unable to get out of bed, she says the same nurse then gave her a “degrading” strip wash, without her consent.
The unit, she said, felt like it was against C-sections.
“Even though it was recommended by doctors that I had caesarean, it was medically necessary, I felt I should have done more to help him,” Morgan said.
Waiting eight hours for a C-section
When Kate* was 38 weeks pregnant with her third IVF baby, she was induced.
The doctors had tried to burst her waters, but realised her daughter was breech when the midwife felt her feet near the bottom of the birth canal, telling her: “I’m glad those didn’t break, I think I just felt a foot.”
At 11pm Kate reluctantly agreed to a C-section, but was told it was “safer to wait until the light of day” to go down to theatre.
She was sent away to an observation area experiencing intense contractions for more than six hours. In those hours, she said she was abandoned without pain relief and was bleeding.
“I felt so alone in the dead of night. My husband had been sent home, and I just wanted someone to talk to, someone to help me.
“I was in so much pain labouring but the midwife made me feel like a hypochondriac.”
She said the situation was escalating, she was becoming dehydrated, and her daughter’s heartrate was climbing, yet no one intervened.
A registrar who began his shift at 7am, examined her and rushed her immediately to theatre.
At this point she was 9cm dilated and the registrar was “shouting at me, telling me not to push.”
Kate’s daughter was her third IVF pregnancy, and she became emotional when she talked about what might have happened, had that registrar not examined her so quickly in the morning.
“They gambled with her life,” she said.
“If my waters had broken and that registrar wasn’t there, she would have started to come with her feet first. Both my boys had shot out, so I could be talking now as a mum who lost her child.
“It didn’t need to even get to that point.
“I should have had my C-section five hours earlier.”
After she had given birth, she was left “in a pool of my own blood, just covered in blood” and had to pull herself out of bed to clean up.
She said she joined the campaign in the hopes women will be listened to in the future and not have to endure what she did.
‘I can’t get my baby out’
Annika Weldon had three miscarriages before giving birth to her son.
“I remember lying on the ward, screaming in pain and none of the other ladies around me were screaming like I was,” she said.
“It didn’t feel right, obviously when you go into labour you expect you are going to be in pain, but I just knew there was something not right.”
The midwife who checked her when she was in active labour could not tell her if she was 1cm or 10cm dilated, she said.
“We spent 45 minutes trying to get my baby out but this midwife that I was with was just so uncaring, she didn’t really explain what I should be doing.”
Annika Weldon miscarried three times before giving birth to her son
She had said early in the pregnancy she told doctors she wanted a C-section and “was told I couldn’t have one”.
“I kind of accepted that unless it was an emergency situation, I wouldn’t be able to have one but then in that moment I was like, I don’t know what else I can do here. I feel completely exhausted; I can’t get my baby out.
“I was just so tired and exhausted.”
Her son was born not breathing and she was haemorrhaging blood.
She was taken to emergency surgery and the last thing she remembers before waking up in the ward is throwing up in her hair.
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Maternity services investigated
She wasn’t told until much later the extent of her blood loss (2.5L) when she was struggling to pick up her own baby: “When I asked for help, I was made to feel like an inconvenience.”
‘OUH is particularly bad’
For Kim Thomas, co-founder of Families Failed by OUH Maternity Services and CEO of the Birth Trauma Association, these stories are nothing new.
But Oxford University Hospitals Trust is “particularly bad”, she says.
“They seem to have this incredibly arrogant attitude. They won’t take criticism.
Kim Thomas, from the Birth Trauma Association
“Women who complain are routinely dismissed. There’s a failure to learn from mistakes.”
She says OUH also has “poor postnatal care”: “Dirty wards, blood on the floor, women left in their own blood, women not helped.”
Yvonne Christley, from OUH, said: “We are never complacent and welcome all feedback, whether positive or negative, as we learn from both.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Too many families have been devastated by serious failings in NHS maternity and neonatal care.
“They deserve swift answers, and urgent action is essential to prevent future tragedies.”
They said the government was “immensely grateful” to families for sharing their experiences.
“[We] will work closely with families on this journey to help ensure no parent or baby is ever let down again.”
The Oxford campaign group is growing daily, with more like Kate, Morgan and Annika joining the ranks of those calling for change.
And each day that passes without answers is a reminder of the trauma they endured.
“It still hurts to look back on. It’s taken a while for me to stop blaming myself, but it doesn’t get easier,” Morgan said.
*Some names have been changed.
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