Tanzania, May 22 -- Dar es Salaam. While Tanzania continues enforcing strict restrictions on abortion, a parallel underground business has quietly expanded in the shadows, drawing in brokers, informal healthcare providers, pharmacists and unregistered treatment locations.

Investigations by The Citizen show that what often begins as a desperate search for reproductive healthcare eventually develops into a profit-driven chain in which women spend hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of shillings trying to terminate pregnancies and later treating complications.

When asked about the government's assessment of unsafe abortion in Tanzania, particularly in Dar es Salaam, director of Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health Services, D...