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
Police chiefs warn of crime surge if Labour’s plans pass – as hunt for mistakenly released prisoners continues
Police are preparing for a surge in crime if the government’s plans to overhaul prison sentences go ahead – with hundreds of thousands more offences expected in a year.
Measures proposed under the Sentencing Bill, intended to ease overcrowding in prisons, include limiting the use of short sentences and releasing some criminals earlier.
However, police chiefs are warning such measures could see up to a 6% rise in crime in the immediate aftermath, should the plans become law.
It comes as a manhunt is under way for two prisoners mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth, including Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian man and registered sex offender, and 35-year-old William Smith.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Manhunt underway: what do we know so far?
‘It has to be properly funded’
Assistant Chief Constable Jason Devonport, who spent 18 months on secondment as a governor at HMP Berwyn, said forces are planning for an increase in all types of offences.
While he said community programmes to support rehabilitation “are being ramped up,” he warned officers “expect, certainly in the short term, there will be an increase of offending in the community”.
“I believe in the Sentencing Bill and I believe in rehabilitation,” he added, “but it has to be properly funded.”
ACC Devonport said the probation service is trying to recruit 1,500 officers a year for the next three years to manage demand, and that the rise in police-recorded crime in one year is expected to be between 4% and 6%.
In the year to June 2025, police in England and Wales recorded 6.6 million offences. A rise of 6% would then equal around 396,000 additional recorded crimes.
Gavin Stephens, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, added that officers have “all been in policing long enough to know that some of the things that help people stop offending or desist from offending are not going to be resolved by short sentences in particular”.
However, he added: “Our issue is in the short-term period of the implementation, there is a shift of demand on to policing, and we want that shift of demand on to us to be properly recognised and properly modelled… so we can have the right and appropriate resource in there to mitigate the risk to communities.”
Feeble and inept – prison release fiasco is yet another political crisis
The charitable view of the latest prison release blunder that has plunged the government into another political crisis is that it’s extremely bad luck rather than an act of incompetence by ministers.
But the more we learn about the shocking details of what happened and what looks like a cynical attempt at a cover-up by the hapless David Lammy, the more the blame can be laid at the government’s door.
More mistaken releases inevitable, MP warns
In a further warning about the state of law and order in the UK, the chair of the Justice Committee has said the prison system is at “breaking point”.
Labour MP Andy Slaughter called the latest mistaken releases “extremely concerning,” adding: “While the day to day running of prison security and public safety are paramount, the current spate of releases in error will be repeated until the underlying failures are addressed.”
He also said evidence taken by the committee “laid bare a crisis-hit prison system, starved of investment over many years which is facing multi-faceted pressures”.
What do we know about the manhunt?
HMP Wandsworth admitted on Wednesday that Kaddour-Cherif, sentenced for trespass with an intent to steal, was accidentally released on 29 October.
His release came just five days after the high-profile release of migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford in Essex.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Lammy refuses to say if more prisoners mistakenly released
Hours after Kaddour-Cherif’s accidental release was confirmed by the Met, Surrey Police announced it was also searching for Smith after another error by prison staff.
The 35-year-old, who was sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences and goes by the name Billy, had apparently been released on Monday.
It is not yet clear why it was nearly a week between the first release at Wandsworth and the police being informed that an offender was at large.
Both mistakes follow vows by Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy that enhanced checks on prisoner releases would be introduced.
He came under fire while standing in for Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs, but sought to blame the Conservatives, saying: “In 25 years in this House, I have not witnessed a more shameful spectacle frankly than what the party opposite left in our justice system.”
News of Kaddour-Cherif’s release broke as PMQs was ending, and a comment released on Mr Lammy’s behalf said he was “absolutely outraged” about it.
He had been repeatedly asked whether any more asylum seekers had been mistakenly released from jail since the Kebatu case, and refused to answer.
Read more from Sky News:
Nearly 40,000 freed early to tackle prison overcrowding
How many prisoners are released by mistake?
Driver hits several people on holiday island
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Lammy has ‘egg on his face’, former prison governor says
In response to concerns of a spike in crime should the Sentencing Bill become law, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said the government “inherited a prison system in crisis, days away from running out of space”.
“Public safety will always be our top priority, and we are building 14,000 more prison places to keep dangerous offenders locked up,” they added.
“Offenders released face strict licence conditions, and we are increasing the probation budget by an extra £700 million over the next three years and investing in new technology to reduce admin, so staff can focus on work that reduces reoffending.”
And in response to the manhunt for the two released convicts, a spokesperson said: “Releases in error have been increasing for several years and are another symptom of a justice system crisis inherited by this government.”
They added: “We are clear that these mistakes must not continue to happen.”
UK
Prince William hails ‘world’s true action heroes’ at Earthshot awards – and gets praise himself from Kylie
Prince William has praised environmental innovators as the “world’s true action heroes”, describing them as the role models we need “in these uncertain times” at his Earthshot awards in Rio.
Joined on stage by four young people from Brazil at his annual ceremony, William explained his motivation to set up the prize, saying of the finalists: “Their stories are the inspiration that gives us courage.”
“And there’s a great deal we can learn from their determination and their vision for scale,” he added.
“As well as their unyielding belief that we can create a better world. It’s no exaggeration to say that they are the world’s true action heroes.”
Pic: Kensington Palace / Andrew Parsons
For the fifth year of his environmental prize, which sees five innovators or entrepreneurs awarded £1m each, he was joined by singers Kylie Minogue and Shawn Mendes performing at the ceremony.
Speaking to Sky News ahead of her performance, Kylie hailed the awards as an “incredible initiative”.
“I’m really excited to see everyone,” she told Sky News. “There’s amazing people doing incredible things, so it’s good to be here.”
The Prince of Wales with Kylie Minogue on the green carpet. Pic: Reuters
Pic: Kensington Palace / Andrew Parsons
‘When we unite, we are unstoppable’
While the awards have been his focus for the first three days of his trip to Brazil, he will travel to Belem tomorrow for COP30, the UN’s climate conference.
Acknowledging the sense of pessimism around the climate debate, exacerbated by recent global turbulence he said: “I understand some might feel discouraged in these uncertain times.
“I understand there is still so much to be done. But this is no time for complacency, and the optimism I felt in 2020 remains ardent today.”
In a call to action, he added: “The issues that continue to face our world are a threat to all of us, but when we unite, our momentum is unstoppable.”
Sir Keir Starmer was also at the ceremony before heading to COP30. Pic: Reuters
He then called on the young people, part of the Mini COP programme, to tell the audience their hopes for the future.
Earlier in the day, the prince had spoken at another Earthshot event about how he does everything he can to reassure his own children that the planet will be looked after.
Pics: Kensington Palace / Andrew Parsons
The spectacular show, also featuring some of Brazil’s biggest stars, was designed to hook in a global and multigenerational audience.
Pic: Kensington Palace / Andrew Parsons
Fortunately for Prince William and his team, it also hasn’t been overshadowed this week by any significant new developments or revelations about his uncle Andrew, who only a week ago was stripped of his remaining honours and titles, and it was announced he would also be moving out of his home Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate.
Expensive, noisy and eight years late, but the British Army finally has a new armoured fighting vehicle that troops could deploy to Ukraine in the event of any peace deal.
The nearly £10m Ajax – weighing more than 40 tonnes – is as heavy as a Russian tank and potentially vulnerable to cheap Russian drones.
Yet it is being billed by the UK as a “next generation” fighting machine, equipped with cameras, protective armour and a 40mm gun, with bullets that can rip through concrete.
Luke Pollard, the defence procurement minister, talked up the fleet’s potential while acknowledging that the £5.5bn procurement has had its issues.
This includes excessive noise and vibrations coming from the vehicles that left 17 soldiers requiring treatment for hearing loss.
“It is an incredible platform. It has got the ability to perform tasks that its predecessors could not,” the minister said, having just gone for a spin in an Ajax during a visit to a General Dynamics factory in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, where the vehicles are being assembled.
“After all the problems it may have had in the past, we have put those to bed now.”
Luke Pollard says issues with the Ajax have been ‘put to bed’
The Ministry of Defence on Thursday declared what is known as initial operating capability for Ajax has been met.
It defined this as the ability to deploy a squadron of 27 vehicles on operations from a pool of 50. The total number of delivered Ajax vehicles is 165.
They come in six variants, with the main type designed for reconnaissance and fighting.
The army has ordered a total of 589 of the various models, which it expects to receive by 2030.
The Ajax was demonstrated during this year’s British Army Expo. Pic: PA
Launched more than a decade and a half ago, the Ajax programme was meant to achieve its initial operating milestone in 2017, but this date has been repeatedly pushed back.
The most serious delay occurred when testing was paused after soldiers suffered hearing and other injuries because of loud noise and vibrations coming from the vehicles.
It is why anyone who uses Ajax today must wear specially secured hearing protection.
Pic: Ministry of Defence
So, what’s it like?
Sky News was among a group of journalists that were invited to ride around on one of the vehicles at a test track on the factory grounds.
The vehicle is very loud – though soldiers said this would not impact its ability to conduct its primary mission of reconnaissance.
They said Ajax is fitted with clever cameras and sensors that can spot a target up to five miles (eight kilometres) away.
However, there is clearly the potential for enemy drones to detect the Ajax in return if it were pushing towards enemy territory in a warzone like Ukraine.
The vehicle’s armour is designed to protect against such a threat. But officials said the fleet has yet to be fitted with electronic countermeasures, even though this kind of equipment is fundamental for any operation in Ukraine to help jam enemy drones.
Pic: Ministry of Defence
When could it be deployed to Ukraine?
The UK, France and a coalition of more than 30 allies have pledged to deploy to Ukraine to help secure the peace if Kyiv and Moscow agree to some kind of ceasefire – a goal Donald Trump has been trying to achieve, but one that seems vanishingly unlikely for now.
However, Mr Pollard signalled that Ajax could be in the mix of any British offering to the mission.
“We’re not yet setting out precisely what capabilities we would deploy to Ukraine in the event of peace, largely because we don’t know when that peace will come, and we keep our military units at a state of readiness, and we rotate through them,” he told Sky News.
“But when we have the ability to deploy incredibly capable platforms like Ajax and the brilliant men and women trained to use it to its fullest effect.
“There’s a clear opportunity for us to be able to enhance NATO’s capabilities on the eastern flank and any coalition of the willing deployment potentially in the future.”
Read more from Deborah Haynes:
Damning report into UK’s fast jets programme
UK military to be given powers to shoot down drones
Lance Corporal of Horse Andrew Rawlinson, 32, of the Household Cavalry Regiment, who is an Ajax commander, said he would be happy to deploy to Ukraine if asked.
“The squadron that I work in, they’re all good to go,” he said.
Lance Corporal Andrew Rawlinson says his squadron are ‘all good to go’ with the Ajax
“We’ve been training on it now non-stop pretty much for a good two years to get to the IOC [initial operating capability] level and I think everyone’s content, knows their jobs and would be happy to roll out.”
Asked whether Russia should be worried, he said: “Yeah, sure.”
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024