Though it’s most closely associated with Nazi Germany, eugenics has a history stateside as well. And it’s not just a thing of the past. “Belly of the Beast” tells the story of Kelli Dillon, one of many women who has been involuntarily sterilized while in prison. Erika Cohn’s documentary sees Dillon teaming up with Cynthia Chandler, a radical human rights lawyer, to expose horrifying reproductive injustice occurring in California prisons by taking on the Department of Corrections.
“I’ve always been a fighter, but it wasn’t truly birthed until I was in prison,” says Dillon, who was serving time for killing her abusive husband.
After telling Dillon she seemed to have cysts on her ovaries, a doctor at the prison asked if she wanted children. She said yes. Already a mother, she was missing the opportunity to watch her two sons grow up, and hoped she’d get the chance to have another child to share that experience with. The 24-year-old consented to a hysterectomy if he found cancer, and on that condition alone.
Following the procedure, Dillon was told she’d still be able to have children. She was lied to. Following health problems and a six-month fight to get her medical records, she and Chandler discovered that she’d been involuntarily sterilized, and she wasn’t the only one.
“Belly of the Beast” explores how — and why — this horror story unfolded: how inmates become numbers, and that depersonalization makes it easier for those in power to abuse them, the stigma against those behind bars that encourages the public to see them as subhuman, and the role that racism plays in all of this. “As a Black woman, my life wasn’t shit,” Dillon says. We hear from another prisoner who says that the forced sterilizations have been much more common among Black and Hispanic women than white women.
The doctor who performs these unwanted, tax payer-funded surgeries justifies this gross abuse of power by suggesting that denying these women the chance to reproduce is cheaper than welfare. As one character in the doc observes, the doctor is “part of a legacy,” and a symptom of a wider problem.
When we asked Cohn what she’d like people to think about after watching “Belly of the Beast” she said, “We witness population control and systemic racism through policing, imprisonment, and a lack of access to healthcare. Our institutions need to be held accountable for how they destroy human dignity, deny the basic human right to family, and devalue Black and Brown lives,” she emphasized. “‘Belly of the Beast’ is a part of the broader conversation that highlights these injustices, advocates for lasting change, and calls for immediate redress and reparation.”
As difficult as it is to watch “Belly of the Beast,” it’s also incredibly inspiring to see Dillon and Chandler fight back against a system that has wronged so many, and particularly people of color. Dillon’s self-proclaimed “sad-ass story” is not complete. Now an activist and advocate, she demands, “There has to be a fucking happy ending.”
“Belly of the Beast” is now in theaters and virtual cinemas. It will air as part of PBS’ “Independent Lens” on November 23.
