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.
Police have been called to the Palace of Westminster after a man was seen climbing up the tower which houses Big Ben.
Video on social media shows a barefoot man stood on a ledge several metres up the Elizabeth Tower holding a Palestinian flag.
Police said they were called to the scene at 7:24am this morning.
A fire engine has now raised a cherry picker to the same height as the man’s position on the tower.
Three people standing on the crane are engaging with the man who is several feet away.
The protester has been sharing videos on Instagram from his viewpoint on the tower as a woman in plain clothes speaks to him from the cherry picker.
The woman says: “At some point you have to come down, how long do you think you are going to be there, how long do you think you are able to be there?”
Her voice is then barely audible as she appears to say “your message was to say ‘Free Palestine'” before she encourages to him come down.
A large red stain which appears to be blood can be seen on the side of the tower around the protester’s feet.
The bare-footed protester is holding a Palestinian flag. Pic: PA
A Met Police spokesperson said: “At 7.24am on Saturday March 8 officers were alerted to a man climbing up the Elizabeth Tower at the Houses of Parliament.
“Officers are at the scene working to bring the incident to a safe conclusion. They are being assisted by the London Fire Brigade and the London Ambulance Service.”
Bridge Street, which is at the north end of Westminster Bridge, has been closed to allow the emergency services to deal with the incident, police confirmed.
Pic: AP
The man before the cherry picker was raised
A spokesman for London Fire Brigade (LFB) said crews from Lambeth, Chelsea, Soho and Islington fire stations have been deployed.
At least nine emergency service vehicles have lined the street in central London as crowds look on from beyond a police cordon.
Pic: PA
The protest in Westminster comes as the Palestine Action group said it had sprayed “Gaza is not for sale” on Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland.
Sharing an image of the vandalism on Saturday morning, the group wrote on X: “Whilst Trump attempts to treat Gaza as his own property, he should know his own property is within reach.”
The Turnberry protest comes after the American president claimed the US will “take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too”.
Mark Hammersley is a survivor. Standing in the Welsh sun, smiling broadly with an outreaching hand to welcome me, he looks the picture of good health.
There is no sign of the trauma. Or the desperate battle for life he fought and won.
Mark Hammersley, who was treated for COVID in an intensive care unit in October 2020
I first met Mark as he gasped for air in Warrington Hospital’s intensive care unit. It was October 2020 and the country was in the grip of the second wave of the COVID pandemic.
“The first 24 hours was critical. I was unconscious really in many ways,” Mark reminds me.
He doesn’t need to. The image of Mark wearing a breathing mask attached by a tube to a CPAP machine will stay with me for a very long time.
He had been admitted after becoming poorly while moving house. Mark was 57 then and his underlying health conditions put him at serious risk.
His raspy voice was barely audible over the constant bleeping of the ICU’s life-saving diagnostic machines.
“I’ve got diabetes and I’m overweight so they’re my risk factors. So to be honest for me it’s still early days,” he told me at the time. His underlying health issues meant Mark had to shield for most of the year. And until then it had worked.
Standing next to his bed I asked Mark if he was concerned about his health, about the possible outcome.
“I’m worried yes,” he replied. “But I’m feeling safe if that makes sense.”
Mark tells me now that the doctors treating him were not sure he would make it through the night. They had warned his wife that he was not likely to survive. But instead of inducing Mark into a coma and putting him on life support using a ventilator, the doctors gambled by using a CPAP machine.
Doctors caring for COVID patients in 2020. Pic: PA
The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure unit crucially keeps airways from narrowing or collapsing.
And that decision, Mark is convinced, ultimately saved his life. He is aware that the outcomes for COVID patients put on ventilators were not good.
Five years on and Mark is still feeling the impact of that devastating infection. But he is a relieved man.
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“I have been told that I have scarring on my lungs but it’s not affecting their functionality, whether it will later on in life I don’t know,” he says.
“So at the moment it’s still a process but I’m a lot better than I was certainly five years ago and it affects you in different ways. When I was in hospital and afterwards I had a lot of muscular pain so for about 18 months I probably couldn’t even put a shirt on properly.”
Paramedics and staff at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in April 2020. Pic: PA
In the ICU bed next to Mark’s I also interviewed a young grandmother. She was sat upright and also breathing with the help of a CPAP machine. But she was much more talkative and alert compared to Mark. She was confident her treatment was going well.
But when I returned to the hospital a few weeks later to follow up with both patients I was told she had died shortly after filming.
Mark was aware. He knows that he will live with the long-term health complications from COVID for the rest of his life. But he’s still thankful, every single day for that opportunity.
Chris Whitty, Boris Johnson and Patrick Vallance during a COVID news conference on 9 March, 2020. Pic: Reuters
The National COVID Memorial Wall in London. File pic: PA
The UK will mark the five-year anniversary of the start of the COVID pandemic on Sunday.
The deadly virus shut down the world after it spread from Wuhan in China at the start of 2020.
Between March of that year and July 2022, an estimated 180,000 people died after contracting COVID in England and Wales, according to figures published by The King’s Fund thinktank.
The UK government said Sunday’s day of reflection will be an opportunity for the public to remember those who lost their lives, as well as reflect on the impact the virus had on everyday life and pay tribute the frontline workers.
Reform UK has suspended MP Rupert Lowe and reported him to the police over alleged threats of physical violence towards the party’s chairman.
A statement from chair Zia Yusuf and chief whip Lee Anderson MP also said the party has received complaints from two female employees about alleged serious bullying in Mr Lowe’s offices.
Mr Yusuf and Mr Anderson said “we understand complaints have been made to parliamentary authorities”.
Mr Lowe, 67, has released a statement saying the allegations were “untrue and false”, the accusations of physical threats were “outrageous and entirely untrue”, and he referenced a “vexatious complaint” made by another staff member.
Rupert Lowe. File pic: PA
Mr Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, has had the whip suspended, meaning he will sit as an independent MP in the House of Commons.
Mr Yusuf and Mr Anderson said in their statement that Mr Lowe had “on at least two occasions made threats of physical violence against” Mr Yusuf.
The statement said: “It is with regret that we feel obligated to disclose that the party received complaints from two female employees about serious bullying in the offices of the member of parliament for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe.”
Claims of ‘disturbing pattern of behaviour’
It added: “Evidence was provided to us of workplace bullying, the targeting of female staff who raised concerns, and evidence of derogatory and discriminatory remarks made about women, including reference to a perceived disability.
“We feel we have a duty of care to all our staff, whether employed directly or indirectly. Accordingly, we appointed an independent King’s Counsel to conduct an investigation into the veracity of these complaints. To date, Mr Lowe has yet to cooperate with this investigation.
“In addition to these allegations of a disturbing pattern of behaviour, Mr Lowe has on at least two occasions made threats of physical violence against our party chairman. Accordingly, this matter is with the police.
“Reform stands for the highest standards of conduct in public life, and we will apply these standards without fear nor favour, including within our own party.”
(L-R) Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and party chairman Zia Yusuf. Pic: PA
Rumblings of leadership challenge
Earlier this week, Mr Lowe appeared to question Nigel Farage’s leadership of Reform UK.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Lowe said: “Nigel is a fiercely independent individual and is extremely good at what we have done so far. He has got messianic qualities.
“Will those messianic qualities distil into sage leadership?
“I don’t know.”
He added: “I’m not going to be by Nigel’s side at the next election unless we have a proper plan to change the way we govern from top to bottom.”
During Mr Farage’s online falling out with Elon Musk, in which the Tesla businessman said Reform needed a new leader, Mr Lowe drew praise from Mr Musk.
And in the interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Lowe noted that he was “barely six months into being an MP” and “in the betting to be the next prime minister.”
‘Disappointed but not surprised’
In his response to the allegations, Mr Lowe said on Friday the party leadership had a “complete inability to accept even the most mild constructive criticism without such a malicious reaction”.
He said in a statement posted on X: “I am disappointed, but not surprised, to read Reform’s untrue and false allegations. Let me be abundantly clear – this investigation is based on zero credible evidence against me, as has been repeatedly stated by the neutral investigator. None has been provided.
“I have cooperated and spoken at length with the KC they instructed, at great cost to the party, to investigate a minor staff matter.”
Read more:
Farage gives up sole control of Reform
Party passes 200,000 members
He claimed the lawyer was “dismayed” the statement from Reform UK had been published – and that the investigation had not even started.
Mr Lowe claimed the lawyer told him that “no credible evidence has been given”.
The MP added that he was sent an initial letter of complaint last Friday from the party with “no evidence provided”.
“I have never made any derogatory comments about women, or those with disabilities. This is a lie. These allegations are not even referring to me. I will be seeking legal advice immediately,” he added.
Analysis: Could Musk have triggered mess within Reform?
It sounds too weird to be true, but Elon Musk may very well be the reason that Reform UK is embroiled in a messy public battle with one of its five MPs.
Detailed and damning statements released on Friday look to be the culmination of months of growing division between Nigel Farage and Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe.
The allegations against him are serious, numerous and have triggered three possible investigations – from the party, the parliamentary authorities and the police.
His rebuttal is equally robust, indicating he will fight hard to clear his name.
But is this battle just about his behaviour? Or is it because of his leadership ambitions? And were they ignited after a bizarre intervention from across the pond?
In January, Musk posted on X, calling for Farage to step down, saying he wasn’t up to the job, and later suggested Lowe could step up as he ‘makes a lot of sense’.
Two months later and relations had broken down beyond repair, with a war of words erupting this week in the papers, in which Lowe called Farage messianic and he responded saying the MP probably wanted to be prime minister.
There is no doubt that an endorsement from the world’s richest man would flatter the ego of any aspiring politician.
But given Friday’s revelations, it seems that instead of kick-starting his rise to the top of Reform, Musk’s meddling has instead severed his ties with the party for good.
When it comes to his parliamentary career, salvaging his reputation could also prove difficult as other critical accounts of his character emerge.
Sky News has heard from Labour MP Mike Kane about an incident which took place in the Commons last December, during which he says he was “manhandled” by the then Reform MP.
The Transport minister described an angry scene in which Lowe had to be restrained by Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, and eventually broken up by the Sergeant at Arms.
Mr Lowe did not wish to comment on the claim, but it adds yet another obstacle in the fight for his political future.
‘Vexatious’ complaint
Mr Lowe continued: “It is no surprise that this vexatious statement has been issued the day after my reasonable and constructive questions of Nigel and the Reform structure. It was issued on X late on a Friday afternoon, with no prior warning.
“All I stated was that communication needs to improve, delegation needs to improve, structure needs to improve – these are all reasonable requests of a party looking to form the next government. I stand by everything I said.”
His response added: “I do not believe that Reform members will be pleased to know that their membership fees are being spent on instructing expensive lawyers to investigate their own MPs, over matters that are entirely baseless and have been dealt with in the correct Parliamentary procedure, with HR’s full involvement and support.
“The staff member in question only raised a vexatious complaint once disciplinary proceedings had been initiated against them for serious wrongdoing. The other individual mentioned, dropped her appeal.”
Read more:
Other Reform MP jailed for kicking girlfriend
Party seen as stronger than Tories
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Mr Lowe said he had been trying to change the way Reform is run “behind the scenes” for many months, and urged his supporters to “stay with the party”.
He said: “This is our party as much as it is Nigel’s.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “On Thursday, 6 March we received an allegation of verbal threats made by a 67-year-old man on Friday, 13 December.
“Officers are carrying out an assessment of the allegations to determine what further action may be required.”
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