A horrifying scheme described as modern-day eugenics has come to light, thanks to the bravery of a victim-turned-whistleblower. Kelli Dillon was given a 15-year prison sentence after killing her abusive husband in self-defense; while in prison, Dillon says she was lied to about a medical condition and was then forcibly sterilized without her knowledge or consent.
Scott Hechinger, a Brooklyn public defender, tweeted about Dillon’s experience. In 2001, while imprisoned at Central California Women’s Prison, the world’s largest women’s prison, Dillon was told she needed surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. Five years later, Dillon began to experience symptoms of menopause at age 24, and it was only then that she discovered she had been given a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent. She quickly sued the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation but lost.
Instead of giving up, Dillon worked with a team of filmmakers who followed her for seven years to tell both Dillon’s story and the stories of other women who suffered the same injustice.
The documentary, Belly of the Beast, was released late last year, and the statistics noted by the filmmakers are disturbing. Women are currently the fastest-growing prison population, and the vast majority of these inmates are already mothers in their childbearing years. The majority are Black, and most are incarcerated for non-violent offenses. Sadly, 92% of these women have been victims of violence and abuse in their lifetimes.
In California, over 1,000 female prisoners were forcibly sterilized, most of them Black. Many of these women were falsely told they had cervical cancer or had hysterectomies unknowingly performed on them after they gave birth. Erika Cohn, director and executive producer of the documentary, found out about these atrocities through Cynthia Chandler, the attorney who represented Dillon and helped her pass SB1135, a bill that bans sterilization in prison for birth control purposes.
For Cohn, the information was particularly disturbing as a Jewish woman. “To me, that really screamed eugenics,” she told the Business Insider. “When I learned about this different kind of genocide that was happening through imprisonment, that was happening through forced sterilizations behind bars, I knew that I wanted to get involved.”
Cohn added, “There’s layers upon layers upon layers of how these procedures happen. And the one thing that remains consistent is that these are coercive illegal sterilizations.” According to Dillon and Hechinger, doctors said forcibly sterilizing Black inmates was better than them leaving prison and going on welfare.
“That is one of the things that has happened to the African American Black woman: We’re seen as welfare recipients. And we’re seen as burdens on the system,” she told The 19th. “If you can perpetuate that lie, and perpetuate those issues, then it’s easier to get not only the buy-in for the agenda and the policy to sterilize us, but you can also get the person who thinks they have a moral high standard of preserving life … you can get them to buy into that b——t too.”
Sadly, the story of California inmates being forcibly sterilized is not rare. Tennessee inmates were coerced into sterilization on a regular basis, bribed with time off of their jail sentences, a program that only came to an end in 2019. These are modern continuations of a long-time effort to sterilize inmates, who — among others — were deemed “defective” or “unfit” to have children.
When Dillon was originally put in prison, she had two toddler sons whom she rarely was allowed to see. Her hope was that once she finished her time in prison, she would be able to start her life over again, find love, and have more children. Yet the knowledge of what happened to her nearly destroyed her.
“It took a moment for me to actually open up and tell my story because it is the most painful part of my life,” Dillon told the Daily Beast. “When I think about it, I am choked up. It still comes up in the middle of my throat like a ball to the point where I almost cannot find my voice, even though my voice may seem strong and I seem boisterous and courageous—but that is not what I’m feeling on the inside.”
The above comes from a Feb. 26 story by Live Action.
This story falsely assumes all women have ovaries. Some women have testicles. Also, some men have ovaries and go through menopause. I’m glad to see that the author made sure to capitalize “Black” in reference to Black peoples, though. Still, more progress needs to be made in the editorial standards to be inclusive and to represent the full spectrum of diversity and intersectional identities. For it could very well be that some of the 1,000 mostly Black people with ovaries referred to in the story identified as men, not women. They have rights too. Their stories need to be told and appreciated too.
A stunning lack of empathy.
You overlook an important fact: this is a Catholic publication and the Catholic Church embraces binary gender identity (“Male and Female He Created Them,” June 2019).
Please Kris do some research. Not one of those 1000 people was a man with ovaries who was sterilized. No one should be sterilized falsely and I weep for the pro-death movement in all it’s forms that is confusing and destroying people. Margaret Sanger would be proud of these prisons.
It’s tragic these women were sterilized.
FYI: the transgender movement is a movement of people deforming their own bodies and having themselves sterilized. They have only my sympathy. They do not comprehend how beautiful they were created.
These comments trivialize Kellie. This page is not the Babylon Bee or some other satire page.
Communist propaganda.
Must be high water under someone’s bridge.
Thank you for sharing this article and drawing attention to a culture of pro-life, not a single issue test for what is pro-life.
“Some women have testicles. Good grief. In what world are we living anymore?
“Some women have testicles”
Some commentors are Nuts.
Question: Why was Kelli Dillon even put into prison if it was self defense???
The entire story is a lie. Live Action got taken in, as did Cal-Catholic and its readers. Nothing pro-life about it. The old tired Black victimization hoax.
“Filmmaker” Erika Cohn is a Communist. Her cousin is the infamous Communist lawyer Marjorie Cohn, former head of the National Lawyers Guild, a notorious Communist front.
#CatholicsSoGullible.
The entire story is a lie. Live Action got taken in, as did Cal-Catholic and its readers. Nothing pro-life about it. The old tired Black victimization hoax.
“Filmmaker” Erika Cohn is a Communist. Her cousin is the infamous Communist lawyer Marjorie Cohn, former head of the National Lawyers Guild, a notorious Communist front.
#CatholicsSoGullible.
Thanks Hymie. I hate being “played.”
But wouldn’t you agree that it would be “nice”
if our rulers could refrain from sterilizing women
without their knowledge and consent?
Black, White, Brown, “Yellow” ………….
or otherwise.
Kris,
I might feel like a chimpanzee, but I’m not. I might feel Black, but I’m not. I am a White woman (not womyn or womxn).
Biology 101 — females have ovaries, estrogen, uterus, breasts, vagina — in the absence of physical pathology; males have testicles, penis, testosterone — in the absence of physical pathology.
Putting an anorexic adult woman who weighs 60 pounds on a diet because she thinks she is fat is crazy. She needs psychotherapy, just as a man who thinks he is a woman does not need mutilating surgery. He needs psychotherapy.
A post like this fails to appreciate the highly complex and nuanced anthropology in which self identities include nonbinary, intersectional realizations about who one really is. The insistence that there is only one right way to be human is another example of an attempt to impose a white supremacist, heterosexist, European, intellectually colonial understanding of human nature on the nonwhite or the “other”. Critical theories have been deconstructing the whiteist structures of power that have dictated and compromised even science’s understanding of nature. For if you say that only the European knowledge-base may be used to reach conclusions about who or what someone is or may be or may love, then you are, unknowingly perhaps, a participant in perpetuating systemic oppression of minority intersectionally identifying peoples. The solution, therefore, is to cast off all tainted white, hetero, Euro-normative systems of thought so that all may be treated equitably.
If the “all white, hetero, Euro-normative system” is the problem, please explain to me why the asian, africian and other non-European white nations/tribes etc have also always had the same thoughts on sexually?
Please do not assume we do not believe everyone shouldn’t be treated equitably, for our Church is the one who lives and believes in the value and dignity of EVERY human being, it is not based on what anyone believes, their age, ability or gifts. I wish everyone knew their value for we are all amazing and unique, including you.
It seems as if Kris is a white male is making fun of the BLM, gender identity and indigenous people’s movements.
Either way, Jesus loves them.
Thank you Peggy. The obsession with sexuality, the false notions of sexuality, and pleasure is leading so many down roads of unhappiness. and regret. If this life-style was really as freeing and the answer, many would be at peace. Yet one does not find this in the long run for most who go down this gender confusion road. Which is why the depression, addiction, and reverse operations and more therapy are so wide-spread. Yet, the demonic continues to scream in people’s ears that this is the answer.
The answer as you may know, but other’s clearly don’t is always to come to God. A gal friend “S” had had surgeries to become a man. I met her at daily mass. She was called there by Jesus in the Eucharist she told me. She truly was a joy to behold. Jesus is always the answer. He is perfect love. If anyone feels inadequate in any way, please go and pray to Him. His love is greater, he wants to help.