Since Roe v Wade was overturned, abortion has become illegal in a lot of states.

But there's a place where people can still get access to an abortion no matter where they live, the internet.

There are dozens of websites selling abortion drugs for as much as $500 a pill pack, most are based overseas, and they don't ask for prescription.

They have names like genericabortionpills.com and online abortion pill Rx.

Our colleague Dominic Mossberg has been looking into sites like these, and she says that a bunch of them look a little off.

If you go on one of these websites, you know, they look, honestly at first glance, they look kind of sketchy, and I think anyone with any amount of internet savviness would, you know, or alarm bells would go off, you know, the interfaces are very, I don't know,

like from the 1990s, the English that's being used looks like it's been taken from like a Google translation.

Let's just put it this way, they don't necessarily inspire confidence.

But as abortion becomes illegal in more states, a lot of people are turning to sites like these.

But what are they getting, and who are they getting it from?

I think for me, I had a lot of questions about, you know, what are these sites, are they reliable, are they trustworthy, what can we find out about them?

And so those were the questions that were leading my reporting.

Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutzen. It's Tuesday, August 30th.

Coming up on the show, the emerging underground marketplace for abortion pills.

Medication abortion, or abortion carried out by taking pills, was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the year 2000.

Now, more than half of all abortions in America are conducted using this method.

But in order to get these pills legally, people still have to see a doctor first, either in person or via telehealth, and get a prescription.

And if you live in a state where abortion is illegal, this, of course, is not an option.

In recent years, a lot of websites have cropped up that offer to send pills directly to your door in an unmarked box.

No prescription necessary.

And in this murky online space, Dominic and her colleagues wanted to find out who is selling these pills, where were they getting them, and just how safe are they?

There are just so many questions. Also, I mean, I think there are some concerns about some of these sites maybe selling bogus pills or selling pills for whatever price that they want to charge.

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