The horrific exposure of forced hysterectomies at an ICE jail in Georgia has forced a reckoning with the U.S.’s long history of sterilizations — particularly of Black, Brown, poor and disabled people — and the way this procedure has continued in jails and prisons to the present day.
We’ll go now to California, where a new documentary is bringing one of these disturbing stories to light. In 2001, Kelli Dillon was sterilized at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. The mother of two in her early twenties was told she was going into surgery for ovarian cysts. She later learned she had been given a hysterectomy.
Dillon was not alone. According to a report from Reveal at The Center for Investigative Reporting, between 2006 and ’10, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 women without required state approval. Prison staff reportedly targeted and coerced women who they thought were likely to return to prison. Up to a hundred more may have undergone the same treatment as far back as 1997. The revelations were a chilling reminder of the 20th century eugenics program, in which 32 states, including California, forcibly sterilized people — many poor, disabled and people of color — for decades.
In 2006, Kelli Dillon became the first survivor of sterilization abuse to sue the California Department of Corrections for damages. Belly of the Beast tells her story and chronicles her fight to hold the state of California accountable. This is the film’s trailer.
COREY JOHNSON: There is a culture of secrecy in California.
SURVIVOR 1: I have some fear. What kind of repercussions will I get for coming on and talking about this?
KELLI DILLON: I always been a fighter. But it wasn’t truly birthed until I was in prison.
SURVIVOR 2: They did a pelvic exam.
SURVIVOR 3: He said I had a fibroid.
SURVIVOR 4: I was told that I had cancer cells.
KELLI DILLON: When I came out, I felt like something was wrong.
ROBIN LEVI: We were getting hundreds of letters about medical abuses every month.
INTERVIEWER: When was the first time a doctor told you that you may be missing your ovaries?
KELLI DILLON: No one ever told me that.
I have been intentionally sterilized, and I have been lied to.
CYNTHIA CHANDLER: The law prohibits sterilizing people in prison for the purpose of birth control. But they were doing it anyway.
COREY JOHNSON: One of the challenges with this story is you ultimately have to get to intent. And then that’s when the doctor said, “Well, that’s cheaper than welfare.”
KELLI DILLON: I was looking at these documents, that was confirming, as a Black woman, my life wasn’t [bleep].
PROTESTERS: No more abuse! No more abuse! No more abuse! No more abuse!
KELLI DILLON: I was very much intimidated by whom I was going up against.
CYNTHIA CHANDLER: The state has admitted that they have done these illegal surgeries, but we don’t actually know who they did them on.
UNIDENTIFIED: Inmates become numbers. They don’t get names. And that’s what makes it easy to abuse them.
SEN. HANNAH-BETH JACKSON: Women in California being coercively sterilized is absolutely revolting.
KELLI DILLON: We have yet to get an apology. We have yet to be acknowledged. The state has to be made accountable.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for Belly of the Beast. We’re joined now by Kelli Dillon herself, whose fight against the California Department of Corrections is the subject of Belly of the Beast, also the founder of community empowerment organization Back to Basics in Los Angeles. And in Salt Lake City, Utah, we’re joined by the film’s director, Erika Cohn.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Well, Kelli, let’s begin with you. Go back to 2006. Again, you became the first survivor of sterilization abuse to sue the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for damages. In 2014, California banned coerced sterilizations, and many people say it’s largely because of what you started in 2006. Take us back to when you were imprisoned and what happened to you.
KELLI DILLON: As I’m sitting here listening to the stories that Dawn Wooten is expressing about some of the detainees in the ICE facility, those stories ring so parallel to my story of what was happening.
I was 19 years old when I was first sent to prison. And at the age of 23, I had some regular, you know, I will say, female issues that I was seeking out the doctor for. And then I was told that I had an abnormal Pap smear and that I would need a cone biopsy to check that out. And so I agreed to it.
And we discussed cancer. Me and the doctor, we discussed that if they found cancer, would I want a hysterectomy? I was young at the time, very much uneducated, didn’t really know the procedures or any other medical options. And I was scared of cancer, like most of us are. And I said, “OK, yes, if you find cancer, then you could perform the hysterectomy.”
But when he went in to do the cone biopsy and to also remove what they say possibly was some cysts, he intentionally cut off the blood supply to my ovaries and then began to perform what was a sterilization on me.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Kelli, when — how soon afterwards did you realize that something was wrong with what they had done to you? And could you tell us about what it was like to trace back the sequence of events of what they had done to you?
KELLI DILLON: Yes. So, you know, I tell people that, spiritually, of course we feel connected to certain things. And immediately coming out of the surgery, I just felt like, OK — number one, I was scared if I had cancer, but then I just felt different. Just in the days of recovery, it just felt like something wasn’t right. But I didn’t pay it any attention. I just thought maybe it was just my nerves. And when the doctor came in and told me that he didn’t find any cancer, didn’t tell me anything else, you know, I was relieved.
But then, several months after that, I began to experience menopausal symptoms at the age of 24. I had hot flashes, heart palpitations and just different things that was happening to me. And I said, “No, something has to be going on.” And when I began to question or write the staff in the prison to see, well, what happened to me, to get some answers as to what happened in surgery, they began to start giving me the runaround.
So, actually, it took, with the help of an agency called Justice Now and a social activist attorney by the name of Cynthia Chandler, who’s also in the film — it took us about a year or so for us to get my medical records, to actually fight, to write, to almost sue them just for the medical records. And when I finally got them, she was the one who told me, as she read through the medical records, that I had been intentionally sterilized.
And that’s something, you know, that people need to know, is that we don’t have access to that medical information. And it’s withheld, even though to everyone else it just may seem like a privilege to ask for a copy of a procedure that happened to you. But for us, we are withheld that information. And if we begin to press, as you guys discussed in the ICE detention center, we are reprimanded and also sometimes put in lockdown or different situations. We’re punished to go after those medical records.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and in terms of the — why did you finally decide to come forward and talk about your experience?
KELLI DILLON: Yes. It took a lot of nerve for me to even first sue them for what had happened while still incarcerated. I had received a lot of different threats from the medical staff, the chief medical officer, as well as some of the correctional officers that was in there, about the repercussions that I will face if I continue on in my lawsuit. But the question is, like: What would you do if you found out that something like this would happen to you? And I just felt like I could not allow CDC to continue on.
But the real press of me wanting to seek justice had a lot to do with the fact that I had begun to see other women that was around my age, around childbearing age, of between maybe 24 to 35 years of age, coming back with all of these hysterectomies. And even though we didn’t say that they were “the uterus collector,” like that doctor is coined in Georgia, but I began to see that, well, what is happening, that mostly African American women or women of color come in very healthy, strong, childbearing women, and then all of a sudden we need all of these hysterectomies. And so, for that — the fight wasn’t just for me. The fight was also for my sisters that I had saw that had been wronged, as well. It’s just that I had the privilege of having an actual legal team to assist me in the journey.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to another clip from the new documentary, Belly of the Beast.
SURVIVOR 1: You gave me a hysterectomy for severe cramps.
SURVIVOR 2: They did a pelvic exam.
SURVIVOR 3: He gave me some kind of a test and said I had some — a fibroid.
SURVIVOR 4: I was told that I had cancer cells.
SURVIVOR 5: They told me that I had to have my ovaries removed. I had no choice.
SURVIVOR 4: We actually need to call them the surgeries of the month, because they were happening so frequently. So many people were getting hysterectomies. That was a cure-all. That’s what it was.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s a clip from Belly of the Beast. And we want to bring in the film’s director, Erika Cohn. Erika, through your research, you determined that between 1997 and 2013, over 1,400 sterilizations were performed. Can you talk about this shocking figure and the work you did, the years you’ve spent on this documentary?
ERIKA COHN: Thank you so much for having me.
We calculated that — between California state audit and prison records, that nearly, as you mentioned, 1,400 sterilization procedures occurred between 1997 and 2013. And since 2014, since a bill was passed in California rendering sterilization for the purpose of birth control illegal — which I think it’s important to know it was already illegal, according to state, federal and international law — California is required to report the number of sterilization procedures performed each year, and prove medical necessity around each procedure. And, you know, one of the ways that California was able to find a loophole around these procedures previously was because they were able to classify them as medically necessary, when we know, in many instances, these procedures actually were not medically necessary. And so, I believe that accountability, holding our institutions accountable, is the only way that we can prevent future abuses like these from happening.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Erika Cohn, of course, these situations happening in the last 20 years, there’s actually a much longer history of this. For instance, it’s been well documented that in Puerto Rico in the late 1940s and 1950s, there was a systemic sterilization of women of childbearing age. Estimates about one-third of all women of childbearing age in Puerto Rico were sterilized during that period, again, as a family planning or birth control system without any kind of explanation to the women of what was actually happening. Informed consent didn’t come until the 1970s or ’80s as a requirement. So there’s been a long history in this country of this type of oppression of women, hasn’t there?
ERIKA COHN: Absolutely, yes. Forced sterilization is genocide. And the legacy of forced sterilization in the United States is deeply rooted in white supremacy. And my actual connection to the story comes from that eugenics history.
You know, I was first introduced to Cynthia Chandler in 2010, the attorney who’s featured in the film, through a mutual friend. And I was really inspired by her work at Justice Now, specifically the Let Our Families Have a Future campaign, which really exposed the multiple ways that prisons destroy the basic human rights of family, one of the most heinous being the illegal sterilizations primarily targeting women of color. And as a Jewish woman who grew up in Salt Lake City 25 years ago, the phrase “Never again” was always profoundly in the back of my mind. And when I learned there was a different kind of genocide happening through imprisonment, through forced sterilization behind bars, I knew that I wanted to get involved. And initially it was by becoming a volunteer with Justice Now, and later becoming a volunteer legal advocate working with over 150 people who were incarcerated in California’s women’s prisons.
And as you see in the film and as you’re talking about, that history of eugenics in the United States is not something that we talk about a lot. When we hear the word “eugenics,” we think of Nazi Germany. We think of the Holocaust. But, actually, what we don’t talk about is the founding of the eugenics movement in the United States and actually how Nazi Germany came to California to learn from our eugenics leaders to take our policies and practices back.
ERIKA COHN: Yes, we do. I thought it was very important to contextualize that this is not an isolated incident, just like we’re seeing in the news with the sterilizations in the ICE facilities. These are not isolated incidents. There is a legacy of forced sterilization.
And, you know, when we think of the word “eugenics,” it’s an ideology or a social movement that is based upon improving the “human race” and society by encouraging reproduction of certain populations that have, quote, “desirable” traits, you know, or discouraging reproduction of certain populations that have, quote, “undesirable” qualities. Essentially, the state is trying to create a master race by controlling who gets to live and who gets to die. And, you know, Nazi Germany actually came to California to learn about California’s eugenics policies.
Between 1909 and 1979, California sterilized 20,000 people through its eugenics program. And over 30 states had laws, eugenics laws, on the books that allowed for compulsory sterilization. We’re actually coming up on the 100-year anniversary of the infamous 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, which upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of people who were deemed “unfit” for the protection and the health of the state, which really set a precedent for states to legally sterilize people in prisons. And so, while state, federal and international law explicitly ban compulsory sterilization, the decision has yet to be overturned.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Erika, the period of time that you’re dealing with is recent, the past two decades. And the governors in California during this time were Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, two liberal Democrats and one moderate Republican. Were you able to sense whether the highest levels of government in California were even aware of what was going on?
ERIKA COHN: That’s a really good question, because in 2003 there was a state apology for the heinous history of eugenics in the state of California. And yet, meanwhile, these sterilizations were going on.
And as we heard earlier by Dawn Wooten, this is not — you know, this is not necessarily about one individual doctor. This is about an entire system. And when we contextualize against the history of forced sterilization in this country, it’s very clear that it’s not one isolated incident.
You know, I have spent the past decade examining human rights abuses, including forced sterilization in California’s women’s prisons, as both a volunteer legal advocate and as a filmmaker, and have experienced the tremendous levels of security and privacy these institutions hide behind, which makes it incredibly difficult to uncover the abuses of power and state-sponsored violence. And so, I really believe we need accountability for these eugenics practices immediately, justice for the survivors and also safeguards to prevent future abuses.
AMY GOODMAN: Kelli Dillon, can you talk about the psychological effects of what happened to you? A young woman, a mom of two, you were imprisoned. They sterilized you. It was you who figured it out; they didn’t tell you this. And what that has meant? You sued. You won in 2014, for so many women, for this to stop in California. But what has it meant for you personally?
KELLI DILLON: Amy, I really thank you for that question, because not too many people ask me that. But going back a little bit, psychologically, what it meant for me is that, as Erika said, the system of things. Number one, I was incarcerated for — at the age of 19 for defending myself from my abuser, and which, at the time, systematically, people didn’t really understand what domestic violence was. And so, as a woman going into — being incarcerated for, number one, defending yourself from your abuser, and then becoming revictimized while incarcerated, it really did something to what I felt the value of my life was. I did not feel that my life had any value.
And then, after finally getting the courage, getting the strength to come up against CDCR, to sue them for what they had done to me and, you know, to also make sure that we set a precedence for what they were doing to my fellow sisters that was incarcerated, as well, I lost that case, in which they said that my statute of limitations had ran out, and that, therefore, I didn’t deserve any compensation for what they had acknowledged that had happened to me, but yet, still, due to a technicality, had denied me any justice. So, those continual messages had begun to really tear down at me to where I began to face depression. I was also — I had a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, a feeling that my life was just not worth anything.
But it was in the fight. It was in the fight, it was in the continual trying to seek justice and, like you say, bring California state to accountability, is what kind of put the fire back into me that, no, I’m not going to just allow this to happen. I’m not going to let them win this time. And so, but it has been a journey to actually gain this empowerment, to gain the strength to come to you right now to even have this conversation with you right now. It has been a journey.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Kelli, your lawyer in this case, Cynthia Chandler, has long believed that the senior officials in the corrections system of California were aware that —
KELLI DILLON: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — people under them were conducting sterilizations specifically for birth control purposes. Could you talk about that and what she’s uncovered in that vein?
KELLI DILLON: Yes. So, in the bill, that initial bill, when we were going for — to stop the continued unlawful and coercive sterilization, there was an official that was appointed over the investigation of how women, or just people in prison — but how medical practices and procedures were done in prison. And so, although they were made aware of what was happening at the time, they still did not do anything. In 2017, Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Senator Durbin, they all visited Central California Women’s Facility and found that the medical practices and the treatment of women in that facility was horrible, but yet it still — even after that, it has been continual neglect of medical care.
Going back to, as you say, the balance between COVID-19 and sterilizations, like right now, the women are not receiving adequate medical treatment, as well as they are being denied, as saying that because — they’re blaming me, but they’re telling the other inmates that “Because one of your fellow inmates sued us, we can no longer care for you. We can no longer do these procedures. We can no longer make sure that your medical health. So you can thank your fellow inmate for that.” So, you know, even though they know that that’s not true, because they were incarcerated with me and they understood the struggle, and they actually encouraged me to keep going, but those are some of the things that they are being told right now as to why they’re not receiving medical care.
AMY GOODMAN: Kelli, has the state apologized for what it did to you and so many other women?
KELLI DILLON: No. And this is the reason why I feel like the state hasn’t apologized. We have had three consistent bills to go up to California state legislators to ask for compensation. And in that compensation is for — it’s not just about, like, victims seeking money. A third of that compensation goes back to the state in order to create a committee, that’s under the Public Health Department, that, first of all, has to identify all of the survivors that you just numbered. And the reason why California has not had to do that is because they’re hiding under HIPAA and medical disclosure laws. So, that committee that’s funding will actually go back to identifying survivors and then notifying them that these things have happened.
Now, although a lot of our — the bill has always passed in the Public Safety Committee, but it gets shut down in the California Budget Committee, because that’s where it will actually be implemented at after that. So, we’re seeking — I’ve actually reached out to — I’ve actually reached out to Senator Kamala Harris myself, her offices. I’ve reached out to so many different — Congresswoman Karen Bass, just different people that I know that may be a little bit more compassionate about the situation, and seeing what we can do in order to push this forward, because this will be the third time that this bill has died.
And now what we’re just asking for is compensation. And it’s really not that much. Just to let you know that after the committee — after the funding goes to the committee, then, with the number of survivors, the survivors will only receive around $20,000 to $25,000, which is nothing compared to what we’ve actually lost. But, however, it is what we are willing to accept, based on the fact of California being able to acknowledge and stand in accountability for what they have done.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Erika Cohn, your film is just coming out, Belly of the Beast. What about at a federal level? As you said, it wasn’t the U.S. looking at the eugenics movement of the Nazis. The Nazis came to California, admiring the U.S. eugenics movement. And so you have this long history. What about federal legislation at this point?
ERIKA COHN: Yeah, federal legislation was actually passed in the 1970s, thanks to the Relf sisters, who brought a case that was revolutionary and was able to ensure that any institution that receives federal funding should not be performing these sterilizations. And so, we are looking at a legacy, as you mentioned, of forced sterilization to — on Indigenous women through the federally funded Indian Health Services program, through Mexican American women who were sterilized without their consent in the Los Angeles County Medical Center.
And we are literally at the precipice of creating lasting change. I think if we confront our eugenics history, we can prevent a new genocide from happening. And as Kelli mentioned, there’s actually a reparations movement going on right now to compensate survivors of sterilization abuse and right that wrong. And in California right now, the reparations movement acknowledges both past and present forced sterilizations, to compensate historical survivors, as well as those who were sterilized as recent as 2014.
And there is a precedent for this. I believe California can follow in the footsteps of North Carolina and Virginia, who were the first to pass the historical reparations bill, as well as ensure accountability for modern instances of forced sterilization, like what happened a few years ago in California and like what is happening at the ICE facility in Georgia today.
_________
Erika Cohn
Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. She is the producer and director of Belly of the Beast.
Kelli Dillon
founder of Back to the Basics, a community empowerment organization based in Los Angeles. In 2006, Kelli Dillon became the first survivor of sterilization abuse to sue the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for damages.
— source democracynow.org | Sep 22, 2020