By Sally Kim, Lisbeth Martine, Alex Morgan, Esha Kher
CALIFORNIA Belly of the Beast, a groundbreaking film by Ericka Cohn, was virtually screened by If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice this past week, exposing patterns of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.
This was filmed over the course of 10 years and put together within seven. The film covers the story of a woman who was involuntarily sterilized at a facility, who then teamed up with a lawyer to stop the reproductive and human rights violations occurring in California.
A statewide investigation to uncover the crimes targeted against women of color and the inadequate healthcare provided to sexual assault and illegal sterilization causes was conducted. The film includes intimate accounts from formerly incarcerated women in one of the largest womens prisons in the world.
In speaking to the difficulties of gaining access to prison staff and people in the prison system who were able to come forward to expose sterilizations, Cohn recounts an instance where a nurse at an immigration detention center trying to expose illegal mass hysterectomies faced retaliation every step of the way and had a fear of losing pensions or facing retaliation for coming forward.
Cohn was overwhelmed by the reach and impact the film had among prisons. She knew that it had to reach people in California womens prisons across the country, but we had no idea that it would be reaching people in mens prisons, in federal prisons.
She said it took a lot of people to shine a light on this issue and coalition building was of the utmost importanceyou have the journalism reporting aspect, the legal advocates, the survivors who are doing the peer to peer human rights documentation work inside prison.
(C)ross collaboration pushes this momentum forward so that there is accountability so that these human rights abuses dont continue to happen, added Cohn. We have the CA Latinos for reproductive justice collaborating with the CA coalition for women prisons collaborating with the disability rights and education defense fund collaborating with our filmmaking team.
Cohn touches on the relationship between lack of educational resources and informed consent among prisoners, explaining when someone is in prison, they dont have access to Google like we do, and their only sources of information are doctors.
And since in prison, the doctors are employed by the prison theres no separation, you dont get access to someone who is unaffiliated with the prison. Its near impossible to obtain informed consent, she said.
The doctors do not ethically or morally question all of this, and allow the procedure to take place. Although these procedures did not take place at the prison, sterilization procedures need a lot of approval to have women go to an outside contracted facility, Cohn noted, and these hospitals and medical care are complicit in it.
Kate Panze, hosting the virtual screening, noted that this film depicts how illegal it is, as well as an ongoing issue. After the screening, the films director joined to answer a Q&A regarding the content of the documentary.
This film will be both difficult to watch and inspiring, Panze stressed.
Kelli Dillon, a main protagonist in the documentary, was given 15 years in prison at the age of 19 for shooting and killing her husband. Dillon shares that the hardest part when taken into custody was being separated from her children, even though she was acting out of protection as a victim of domestic violence.
The worst was yet to come when she was imprisoned at the worlds largest womens prison located in Central California.
A few years after being imprisoned, Dillon began to experience symptoms like abdominal pain. Dillon asserts that she was told she had an abnormal pap smear, resulting in her needing a cone biopsy in order to see if there are signs of cancer.
Do you want any more children? doctors asked her. Dillon responded yes because she was looking forward to forming part of a healthy relationship and raising more children, because she felt that her sentence had robbed her from having that chance.
Doctors proceeded to get Dillons consent to have a hysterectomy only if cancer was found.
When I came out I felt like something was wrong, she said, and added she asked her doctor if she could still have children and he responded, Yeah, I dont see why not.
Cynthia Chandler, justice attorney and founder of Justice Now, says that she was receiving letters from an overwhelming number of prisoners every month about the horrible medical abuses taking place with prison. At Justice Now, they had received a letter from Kelli Dillon that they deemed very troubling.
Nine months after surgery, Dillon had begun to feel surgical menopause symptoms, such as late periods, heart palpitations, and severe weight loss.
After being advised to ask for her medical records, Chandler and Dillon found out that she was lied to and intentionally sterilized after agreeing to have a hysterectomy only if she had cancer. And Dillon did not have cancer.
According to Chandler, women prisons in California have had a horrific track record of medical care. For instance, Dillon began noticing while she was imprisoned that other women were having the same symptoms as herself after having the same surgery she was told to have. Many women were given different diagnoses, and all of them were sterilized without their consent.
Dillon became the first sterilization victim to sue for damages, holding the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) accountable. The trial hearing was in front of a predominantly white jury, and they believed the doctors versions of events.
I was looking at these documents that were confirming that as a black woman, my lifedidnt mean anything, it had no purpose, Kelli exclaimed.
According to Chandler, federal and state laws prohibit sterilizing people in prison for the purpose of birth control. However, the prison system was still doing it anyway, especially after women inmates go into labor and delivery during their imprisonment.
In California, the state was in a league of its own when it comes to eugenics during modern-day. A report documents that 20,000 people were sterilized in the state, more than any other state in the country.
It became evident that sterilization was used as a form of birth control on women of color in order to drop the number of minority populations.
Women inmates share that doctors were very unprofessional and unsanitary when it came to treating pregnant patients. In addition, there were doctors that would become insistent on women using sterilization as a form of birth control if they had returned to prison pregnant for a second time.
Between 2006 and 2010, about 150 women were illegally sterilized by being pressured by doctors into tubal ligations while being heavily sedated on the operating table.
The fact that we are in the 21st century and we have to ask our state auditor to see if women in California are being coercively sterilized is revolting, exclaimed Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson.
The Department of Corrections and the Receivers (appointed and responsible for managing all medical programs and their related costs) claimed that usually there was very little personal knowledge on the part of prison administrators of what was going on.
Its my understanding that many of these did have some kind of consent at the outside doctor because these procedures are performed in a community facility just so that its clear. They are not performed at the institution, said Kathleen Allison of CDCR.
Joyce Hayhoe of the California Prison Health Care Services explained how doctors statewide felt for whatever reason that it was being sanctioned by the department.
Clark Kelso, a federal Receiver, said there may be doctors who arent aware of the policy or the federal law issue, noting, I can well imagine an outside physician in good faith thinking that this is a matter of reproductive autonomy, not knowing about the conversation that has been going on about the inability to give valid consent in prison.
For inmates to sign consent is a really big deal because they are seen as a ward of the court and not really being allowed to enter into contracts.
There shouldve been a red flag when the billing department received those bills but, Kelso continued, explaining that when he entered the Receivership in 2008 they did not use standard medical billing codes so there was no easy way for them to know they were paying for these surgeries.
This explanation was not believable, because all the documents and paperwork that go into medical procedures are expansive, as a former OB nurse attested to the fact that everything went through a committee and was documented as to why it was necessary.
By the time Dr. Heinrich was hired, sterilization practices had been going on for years at multiple prisons. He strongly believed that there were women who were gaming the system and needed to be stopped.
This attitude tracked precisely to the historical attitude of the California leaders of the eugenics movementthey had always used cost benefit as justification for why they were doing what they were doing.
Senator Jackson attended Dillons hearing even though she wasnt even on the committee.
She explained how sterilization has been illegal since 1979 and many assumed it had ended at that time. Her new bill, SB 1135, was to make it very clear that doctors cannot perform these procedures in prison because even nurses were not aware they were illegal.
At the time Dillon was imprisoned, she had less than a year left to obtain her Associates Degree for Social Studies. She wanted to work with battered women and troubled young teen girls.
Dillon appeared on a radio show called The Dialogue, where it was revealed that 92 percent of women are in prison for domestic violence.
Kelli explained on the show that she had already been sexually assaulted and held hostage at home for three days and beaten. Yet, when she called the police, their response was, You dont look like a victim.
The American College Of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the bill because they believed by completely taking away sterilization, they are taking away womens right to consent to a procedure.
This was a surprise because very few of their members, let alone their leadership, work in prisons. Their opposition created a tremendous obstacle for this bill.
Prisoners have said that asking people in prison to make a decision like Dillons is not the best idea because people have total control over them and if they dont follow the rule or anybody simply says they didnt, they can have time added to their sentence.
Dillon testified in front of the Assembly Health Committee after the bill had stalled. If it passed the committee, it would go to the Assembly floor and, if it passed that, to the governors desk.
Dillon delivered an emotional and deeply touching testimony, pleading, I trusted the surgeons to respect and to acknowledge that I still had a future and that I wanted one.
She further asked, Did this happen to me because I was African American? Because I was a woman? Because I was an inmate? Or did it happen to me because I was all three?
She said that this bill will help to protect other women who have the opportunity to be rehabilitated and to actually restore the quality of their lives and to enjoy the gift that life has to offer, which includes motherhood and having children.
The film ends as every committee member said aye in support of the bill. Governor Jerry Brown signed and passed SB 1135 with bipartisan support, bringing an end to forced prison sterilization.
Sally Kim is a senior at UCLA, majoring in Sociology. She is from the East Bay Area.
Lisbeth Martinez is a third year at UC Davis, double majoring in Communication and Political Science. She currently lives in Shafter, California.
Alex Morgan is a 3rd year Political Science Major at Westmont College. She is originally from Santa Barbara, California
Esha Kher is an undergraduate student at UC Davis studying Political Science and Computer Science, hoping to pursue a career in corporate law. She is passionate about legal journalism and political advocacy that provokes new perspectives and sparks conversation among the public. When she is not reporting for The Davis Vanguard, Esha is either trying out a new YouTube workout or reading a book on late modern philosophy.
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