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.
Rachel Reeves has said she recognises she is “asking ordinary people to pay a little bit more” after she announced £26bn worth of tax rises in her budget – including extending the freeze on personal income thresholds.
However, the chancellor also told Sky News political editor Beth Rigby that she had “managed to keep that contribution as low as I possibly can by closing loopholes and asking those with the broadest shoulders to pay more”.
The package contains a new “mansion tax” on properties worth over £2m, while people paying into their pension pot under salary sacrifice schemes will face national insurance on contributions above £2,000.
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Beth’s budget verdict: ‘You’re paying more’
In a win for Labour MPs, the two-child benefit cap will be scrapped from April, costing £3bn by 2029/30.
Spending is set to rise by £11bn overall by this date, with a big chunk of this money funding policy U-turns on welfare.
The chancellor also announced:
• New taxes on the gambling industry to raise more than £1bn;
• A new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028;
• The amount you can save in a tax-free cash ISA has been slashed from £20,000 to £12,000, except for over 65s;
• The 5p cut in fuel duty will remain in place until September 2026, when it will be reversed through a staggered approach.
Read More: The budget key points at a glance
The measures, which were published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) ahead of time in an unprecedented blunder, will take the UK’s tax burden to an all-time high of 38% of GDP in 2030-31, the fiscal watchdog said.
Ms Reeves blamed Brexit and the Tories’ legacy, saying her choices would lead to a “fairer, stronger, more secure Britain”.
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She told Rigby she acknowledged the changes “have a cost for working people”, but twice refused to say she had broken Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase income tax, national insurance and VAT.
But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the budget was a “total humiliation”, given the chancellor promised that her £40bn tax raising budget last year would be a once-in a parliament event.
Ms Badenoch said: “Last year we had the horrors of the Halloween Budget. This year it’s the Nightmare Before Christmas. And as for her, she’s the unwelcome Christmas guest, 10 minutes through the door and and she’s eaten all the Quality Street.”
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‘A total humiliation’: Badenoch targets Reeves in budget response
What does the freeze on income tax thresholds mean?
The freeze on tax thresholds, introduced by the Conservatives in 2021, was due to end by 2028.
Ms Reeves has extended it for another three years, in a move which will raise an estimated £8bn for the exchequer in 2029-2030 by dragging some 1.7 million people into a higher tax band.
The chancellor previously said she would not freeze thresholds as it would “hurt working people”.
However she was left with a fresh fiscal blackhole of around £30bn after the OBR downgraded its growth forecasts for the UK economy in each year from 2026 to 2029.
The “mansion tax” will raise £0.4bn in 2029-30, while charging national insurance on salary-sacrificed pension contributions, to take effect from 2029, is estimated to raise £4.7bn, the OBR said.
A further £2.1bn will be raised through increasing tax rates on dividends, property and savings income by two percentage points.
The measures mean the amount of headroom the government has against the chancellor’s day-to-day spending rule that prevents her from borrowing will widen to £21.7bn, almost £12bn more than March.
Package of small tax rises
Read More: What the budget means for your money
Some policies announced today have previously been confirmed by the government, including a “milkshake tax”, a rise in the national minimum wage, the freezing of rail fares and powers for local mayors to impose a tourism tax.
Further spending announcements include free training for apprentices under 25 at small and medium-sized companies, £5m for secondary school libraries and £18m to improve playgrounds in England.
There have also been spending cuts, including a cut to VAT discount for ride-hailing apps like Uber – something critics have branded a “taxi tax” – while a scheme to help disabled people with the cost of a car will no longer offer “luxury vehicles”.
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Budget details released early in error
The budget was seen as a big test for Sir Keir Starmer, who has faced threats of a leadership challenge if Labour’s polling doesn’t improve.
Labour MPs on side – for now
Patrick Hurley, the Labour MP for Southport, told Sky News the package was “much stronger than I was expecting”.
He added: “Very good news on child poverty, gambling taxes and mansion taxes. A lot done, and a lot still to do after 14 years of declining living standards under a succession of dreadful Tory PMs. But I’ve left the Chamber in a much happier mood than when I walked in at 11.30.”
John McDonnell, A veteran left wing MP within Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group (SCG), said removing the two-child cap was a “major win” for colleagues who had pushed for the move.
However he said Ms Reeves’ tax increases on wealth don’t go far enough, with the freeze on tax thresholds offsetting other measures aimed at increasing disposable income and resulting in living standards remaining “at a standstill”.
In a message to the SCG he said: “Despite the policy changes we have secured today on child poverty and taxation of wealth it does frustratingly point to the last 18 months being wasted when with our majority we could have done so much more to address the poverty and inequality that scars our community and put money in people’s pockets to drive economic growth.”
UK
Why seven household names – including Prince Harry – are suing one of Britain’s biggest media groups
Prince Harry and six other household names are suing the publishers of the Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful information gathering dating back 30 years.
The case has been ongoing since 2022 and is just one of several Harry has filed against media organisations since 2019 over alleged breaches of privacy, unlawful practices and false stories.
Associated Newspapers (ANL) – which also publishes The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline – strongly denies any wrongdoing.
A full trial is not expected to start at London’s High Court until January, but a pre-trial hearing, which helps manage the case and resolve any outstanding issues, is set to take place today.
Here is everything you need to know about the case.
What’s alleged?
The alleged unlawful acts are said to have taken place from 1993 to 2011, including the publisher hiring private investigators to secretly place listening devices inside cars and homes and paying police officials for inside information.
When bringing the lawsuit in 2022, lawyers for the claimants said they had become aware of “highly distressing” evidence revealing they had been victims of “abhorrent criminal activity” and “gross breaches of privacy” by Associated Newspapers.
Associated Newspapers denies the allegations, describing them as “preposterous smears”, and claims the legal action is “a fishing expedition by [the] claimants and their lawyers”.
The accusations include:
• The hiring of private investigators to secretly place listening devices inside people’s cars and homes;
• The commissioning of individuals to surreptitiously listen into and record people’s live, private telephone calls while they were taking place;
• The payment of police officials, with corrupt links to private investigators, for inside, sensitive information;
• The impersonation of individuals to obtain medical information from private hospitals, clinics, and treatment centres by deception;
• The accessing of bank accounts, credit histories and financial transactions through illicit means and manipulation.
Pic: iStock
Who else is involved?
While Prince Harry is one of the key players, as a group litigation, he is not the only claimant.
The others include:
• Actress Elizabeth Hurley
• Actress Sadie Frost
• Sir Elton John and his husband, filmmaker David Furnish
• Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence
• Former Liberal Democrat politician Sir Simon Hughes
Sadie Frost. Pic: PA
Baroness Doreen Lawrence. Pic: AP
They all allege they have been victims of “abhorrent criminal activity” and “gross breaches of privacy” by ANL.
David Sherborne is the lawyer representing all the claimants.
Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish (below). Pic: AP
Pic: AP
What happened in 2023?
During a preliminary hearing in March 2023, Judge Matthew Nicklin was tasked with ruling whether the case can proceed to trial.
ANL had asked for the case to be struck out entirely, arguing the legal challenges against it were brought “far too late”, but David Sherborne called for the publisher’s application to be dismissed.
Lawyers for the publishers said the claims fell outside the statute of limitations – a law indicating that privacy claims should be brought with six years – and the claimants should have known, or could have found out, they had a potential case before October 2016.
Prince Harry at the High Court in 2023
They also argued some aspects of the cases should be thrown out as they breach orders made by Lord Justice Leveson as part of his 2011 inquiry into media standards.
During the hearing, a number of the claimants attended the High Court, including Prince Harry, to the surprise of the British media.
Witness statements from all seven claimants were also released. The duke’s statement said he is bringing the claim “because I love my country” and remains “deeply concerned” by the “unchecked power, influence and criminality” of the publisher.
“If the most influential newspaper company can successfully evade justice, then in my opinion the whole country is doomed,” he said.
On 10 November 2023, Mr Justice Nicklin gave the go-ahead for the case to go to trial, saying ANL had “not been able to deliver a ‘knockout blow’ to the claims of any of these claimants”.
What’s happened since?
Earlier this year, lawyers for the claimants sought to amend their case to add a swathe of new allegations for the trial.
They argued that they should be allowed to rely on evidence that they said showed the Mail was involved in targeting Kate, the Princess of Wales.
However, Mr Justice Nicklin ruled this allegation was brought too late before trial.
In a further development in November, the High Court heard that a key witness in the case, private investigator Gavin Burrows, claimed his signature on a statement confirming alleged hacking had taken place, was forged.
Lawyer David Sherborne is representing all the claimants
In the statement from 2021, Mr Burrows allegedly claimed to have hacked voicemails, tapped landlines, and accessed financial and medical information at the request of a journalist at the Mail On Sunday.
The statement was important, as five of the seven claimants involved in the case told the court they embarked on legal action against ANL based on evidence apparently obtained by Mr Burrows.
Mr Burrows previously retracted his statement in 2023, but the court heard he reiterated the denial to ANL’s lawyers in September this year.
It is now up to the claimant’s lawyer Mr Sherborne to decide if he still wants to call Mr Burrows as a witness for the trial.
Mr Justice Nicklin previously said if Mr Burrows gave evidence that was inconsistent with the evidence they had obtained, then he could apply to treat him as “hostile”.
Could the case end before going to trial?
In short, yes.
During pre-trial reviews, cases can either be settled or dismissed from court in both civil and criminal cases, meaning no trial will take place.
This happened in Harry’s case against News Group Newspapers (NGN), which publishes The Sun. The duke made similar accusations about NGN, which involved unlawful information gathering by journalists and private investigators.
Before an up-to 10-week trial began earlier this year, it was announced both sides had “reached an agreement” and that NGN had offered an apology to Harry and would pay “substantial damages”.
The settlement was reported to be worth more than £10m, mostly in legal fees.
Another of Harry’s legal cases, this time against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over accusations of historical phone hacking, did go to trial.
The trial saw Harry take to the witness box, making him the first senior royal to give evidence in a courtroom since the 19th century.
In December 2023, the Honourable Mr Justice Fancourt concluded that the duke’s phone had been hacked “to a modest extent” between 2003 and 2009, and 15 of 33 articles he complained about were the product of unlawful techniques.
He was awarded £140,600 in damages. During a further hearing in February 2024 a settlement was reached between Harry and MGN over the remaining parts of his claim.
If the ANL trial does go ahead early next year, it is unknown if Harry will travel to London to attend.
Bereaved families of black, minorities and migrant women who died after suffering violence and abuse have called on the prime minister to help end femicide.
At a Downing Street vigil on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the group said urgent reforms to policing and sentencing are needed “to address systemic failures”.
Yasmin Javed, whose daughter Fawziyah Javed was killed after being pushed by her husband from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, said authorities had ignored Fawziyah’s reports of abuse.
Fawziyah Javed died after being pushed by her husband from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh
“It fell on deaf ears,” she told Sky News, explaining that Fawziyah, 31, who was pregnant when she died, had made complaints about her husband but had been murdered days before she was set to leave him.
“We’ve had our hearts ripped into millions of pieces. It’s not getting any easier, it’s getting more and more difficult.”
Kashif Anwar was convicted of Fawziyah’s murder and was jailed for at least 20 years in 2023.
Tuesday’s vigil highlighted key legislative amendments the families, led by campaign group Southall Black Sisters, are championing.
The amendments include Banaz’s Law, named after 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, who was subjected to an horrific assault, strangled and stuffed in a suitcase by family members on the orders of her father.
The Downing Street vigil took place on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
The amendment seeks to explicitly recognise “honour-based” abuse as an aggravating factor in sentencing for relevant offences.
The families also want courts to impose sentences equivalent to murder for self-harm and suicides driven by domestic and “honour”-based abuse, and say the government must ensure all women have equal access to safety and support, regardless of immigration status.
Banaz Mahmod’s sister Bekhal, who testified against her relatives to help secure their conviction, said nearly two decades after the murder, efforts to protect women had not progressed.
Banaz Mahmod was killed on the orders of her father
Speaking from an undisclosed location in the witness protection scheme, she said the murder “happened in 2006, and we’re almost in 2026 – that’s 20 years later. Not much has changed and it’s very, very disappointing.
“What happened to Banaz has happened, but what we could do is prevent it from happening to other people. I don’t understand why much more hasn’t been done to better the situation for others.”
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