A new film chronicles the illegal sterilisation of women in prisons

By M.H.

IN 2001 KELLI DILLON was an inmate in Central California Women’s Facility when she began experiencing pain in her abdomen. A doctor, suspecting ovarian cysts, ordered a biopsy. But after the procedure, Ms Dillon started having heart palpitations and night sweats. Her periods stopped. The doctor had not only removed the cysts, he had also taken out her ovaries. She had been sterilised at the age of 24.

“Belly of the Beast”, a documentary directed by Erika Cohn, chronicles Ms Dillon’s harrowing experience. Shot over seven years, it also follows Cynthia Chandler, the co-founder of Justice Now, an advocacy group for women prisoners, as the pair seek legal and financial redress. Ms Dillon’s discovery that a dozen other women in prison had also been sterilised was the catalyst for further research by the group and, later, by Corey Johnson of the Centre for Investigative Reporting, a think-tank.

Mr Johnson found evidence of 148 instances between 2006 and 2010 in which doctors in two prisons had performed unauthorised tubal ligations (the permanent blockage or removal of the fallopian tubes) on inmates. Some women said that they were pressed to get the procedures, which were often added onto surgeries such as caesarean sections; others were not properly informed about what would take place. Dr James Heinrich, who performed many of the operations, told Mr Johnson he had been saving the state from having to pay welfare for “unwanted children”.

After the news broke, California’s legislators held hearings—at which both Ms Dillon and Ms Chandler testified—and outlawed sterilisation as a form of birth control in prison in 2014. Data from a state audit, and prison records collected by journalists working with Ms Cohn, indicate that between 1997 and 2013 nearly 1,400 women were sterilised while incarcerated in Californian penal institutions.

“Belly of the Beast” was a difficult film to make. Would-be financial backers initially found the premise unbelievable. Ms Cohn had limited access to her sources in prison and it was hard to get access to documents. Because some of the key events had already happened behind bars, “we chose to carefully reconstruct, each memory, each moment, each constricted space,” she says. She weaves these into a compelling narrative with a combination of interviews and archival footage.

Ms Cohn argues that the operations were not an aberration. In the 20th century eugenics programmes were common in America. Of the more than 30 states that implemented them, California’s was the biggest, with some 20,000 people forcibly sterilised between 1909 and 1979. The programmes targeted people for reasons such as being “feeble-minded”, “immoral” or an addict, and often singled out ethnic minorities. Virginia, which was second only to California in the number of people it sterilised, also persisted with the policy until 1979. More than a fifth of its approximately 8,000 victims were African-American.

“The illegal sterilisations primarily targeting women of colour really screamed eugenics to me,” Ms Cohn says. “As a Jewish woman who grew up in Salt Lake City, the phrase ‘never again’ was just always profoundly in the back of my mind.” The subject is also relevant again in light of allegations that sterilisations have been happening in ICE detention centres. “When you can contextualise the historical precedents, that helps us better understand why these incidents keep occurring.”

Ms Dillon sued the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in 2006 for the loss of her fertility and the violation of her civil rights, but she lost the case in 2009. Citing the statute of limitations, the CDCR said that she had waited too long to make her claim. In February a bill was introduced to California’s legislature to give reparations to people wrongfully sterilised by the state, but it did not move forward. (North Carolina, by contrast, passed a reparations bill in 2013 and Virginia followed in 2015.) Ms Cohn remains hopeful that these women will receive compensation in the future. “You see Kelli and Cynthia and these other organisations still fighting...they’re literally at the precipice of creating lasting change in regards to this issue. So I think it’s important to highlight that this is also a tale of inspiration.”

“Belly of the Beast” aired on PBS in America on November 23rd and is available to stream online for two weeks