- il y a 5 mois
This Movie is a powerful documentary that follows the journey of women who seek truth and justice within a complex system. Through personal stories and determined advocacy, the film sheds light on resilience and the fight for dignity. With emotional depth and a strong message, it highlights the importance of courage and awareness.
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00:00:00Sous-titrage MFP.
00:00:29...and all of the cows and the planes.
00:00:35And at 19, thinking to myself, like, wow, there's so much on this earth that I haven't seen.
00:00:43And now I'm getting ready to go spend 15 years of my life in prison.
00:00:49Will you state your full name for the record, please?
00:00:52Kelly Lashon Dylan Thomas.
00:00:55Dylan was your maiden name?
00:00:57Yes.
00:00:59I was sentenced for shooting and killing my husband.
00:01:06The most painful thing was when the police came to get me and having to separate between me and my children,
00:01:15even though I had protected us from a monster.
00:01:19The blue marks were put together by your husband?
00:01:23Yes.
00:01:24With?
00:01:25An iron.
00:01:26An iron?
00:01:27Yes.
00:01:27And this crew during a fight?
00:01:29Yes.
00:01:30And he put the iron, what, to your neck?
00:01:32I'm trying to remember what my children felt like, their skin felt like, what their breath smelled like.
00:01:53I cannot believe that my life has come to this.
00:02:11I've always been a fighter, but it wasn't truly birth until I was in prison.
00:02:22I've always been a fighter, but it wasn't truly birthed.
00:02:52It's hard to figure out what to wear to prison because you can't wear red, green, brown, khaki, orange, or denim of any color.
00:02:59When people in prison have a visit, they have to go through a strip search, and they have to expose themselves in front of at least one guard, if not many more.
00:03:11Usually visitors come in only wear black or white, and I decided at some point to bring a level of levity and color to the visits.
00:03:22Folks inside loved it.
00:03:27They would see me coming and start giggling and laughing about what wild shoes I had on.
00:03:33There was this one correctional officer who was like, you can't wear those shoes.
00:03:36And I was like, can you point to the rule that says that these violate any kind of dress code?
00:03:44All the correctional officers and the high-level folks from the Department of Corrections were always treating me like a small child.
00:03:53And so at some point I decided to just own it and take on the brand of kind of being like a tacky whippersnapper.
00:03:59Waking up and leaving my house.
00:04:29before six in the morning, and driving to prison, and spending the day bearing witness to pretty significant trauma, and it's really very draining.
00:04:43Whenever you're fighting human rights abuses in prison, you never know what to expect.
00:04:48The first thing I remember seeing, the girls yelling in the cells, and it just looked like top and bottom tier of caged animals.
00:05:08Everything is exposed.
00:05:10You have male officers who can actually look in the cell and see women sitting on the toilet changing their pads.
00:05:20A few years later, I began to experience like a domino pain.
00:05:30I was told I had a abnormal pap smear and needed a cone biopsy to look for cancer.
00:05:42The doctor said that it seems like I had cysts that was growing on my ovaries.
00:05:50He asked me how old I was. I was about 24. He said, do you want any children?
00:05:56I said, yes. I have two sons already, and because I'm not going to have a chance to raise them,
00:06:02I'm looking forward to meeting someone who actually loves me and raising more children.
00:06:07So he said, if I find cancer, do you want us to do a hysterectomy?
00:06:13And I said, yes, if you find cancer.
00:06:18So me and four other girls were called out to get chained up in order to go out for surgery.
00:06:25Everything is assembly line. We're all handed a piece of paper by two nurses.
00:06:31They're standing there like, you guys need to hurry up and sign.
00:06:34We're trying to read as much as we can to understand, but for the most part we're looking and said,
00:06:38this is for you to consent to the surgery that you're having today.
00:06:55When I came out, I felt like something was wrong.
00:07:00He told me everything is fine. We took out some sits.
00:07:03So then I asked him, will I still be able to have children?
00:07:06He was like, yeah, I don't see why not.
00:07:08Are you starting to actually get more hope though around your own case?
00:07:13We were getting hundreds of letters about horrible medical abuses every month.
00:07:20But then one day we got this letter from Kelly Dillon and it was really troubling.
00:07:29It's almost nine months past and I haven't had my period.
00:07:36I got bad panic attacks, heart palpitations, night sweats, and I'm damn near a hundred pounds smaller.
00:07:43She was suffering all these symptoms that were classic symptoms that were classic symptoms of surgical menopause.
00:07:50But she was a young woman in her 20s.
00:08:03Cynthia advised me, you need to get your medical records.
00:08:08After six months of fighting to just get my medical records, Cynthia sat with me in the visiting room and she read them to me.
00:08:29What it says is that you have abnormal cervical cells.
00:08:36I asked her, did it ever say I have cancer?
00:08:39She said, no, you never had cancer.
00:08:45I have been intentionally sterilized and I have been lied to.
00:08:59My name is Cynthia Chandler. I'm the co-director of the Justice Network on Women, which is a new organization based in Oakland that provides legal services and community organizing around the needs of women prisoners.
00:09:10When I got out of law school in 1995, I didn't know anything about anything happening in prison until really meeting people who were really living there who had to make prison their life.
00:09:22I'm HIV and Hep C co-infected. I'm self-disclosed.
00:09:27I had heard some bits and pieces about Cynthia. She was a young white woman, a Harvard grad, and Cindy came up to me and I can't like even imagine what she's got to tell me.
00:09:38We're failing to provide the most basic care to the sickest and most vulnerable of the women who are in this prison system.
00:09:46She was an attorney for compassionate release and I was like, compassionate release? Like who does that?
00:09:51Like who fights for somebody that's going to die and you fight to get them home?
00:09:57Many of us watched her as Mary Willoughby die because the Department of Corrections refused to acknowledge that she was dying.
00:10:06Her worst nightmare came true. She died absolutely alone, surrounded by not a single person who she loved.
00:10:16She started making kind of sense to me how us women need to learn how to defend ourselves legally and how we need to find a remedy for human rights violations inside.
00:10:29It shouldn't be up to an inmate to have to sit and figure out what my T-style count is and what it means to me.
00:10:38I watched two women die on my yard that I was very close to and that I knew. If I could see that the whites of their eyes were as yellow as a caution sign, why couldn't somebody else?
00:10:50Health care is so bleak, it's hard to imagine it's even by accident.
00:10:55Last year, there were about 150 formal complaints filed by inmates every month from allegations of incompetence to actual charges of sexual harassment.
00:11:06We have a health care staff who you go in for a cut on the finger, likes to give you a pap smear.
00:11:11For a chest cold, let me, you know, do a pap smear.
00:11:14I've heard inmates tell me that they would deliberately like to be examined. The only male contact they get.
00:11:22You're telling me they're coming in here, in effect, asking for them? Some sort of titillation?
00:11:28It could very well be. It could very well be.
00:11:35California's women's prisons have always had a horrific track record of medical care.
00:11:40This Friday, Judge Felton Henderson delivered a ruling that charged deplorable conditions in state prisoner medical care.
00:11:48I had doctors in what looked like broom closets seeing prisoners and I went and saw them standing in line.
00:11:59The ceiling was dripping water and they were standing in a half inch of water waiting to be seen.
00:12:06The federal courts took over the whole health care system for California's prisons and placed it under federal receivership to bring the health care up to constitutional standards.
00:12:19You know, people would say, well, how dare, you know, a receiver or somebody come into our house and tell us how to do things.
00:12:25CDC is punishment. And there was a lot of pushback on adding rehabilitation to just CDC and making it CDCR.
00:12:38They really saw the receivership as a threat.
00:12:44I worked at the Central California Women's Facility for about 17 years.
00:12:49People that do things for inmates are that try to ensure that they get their care.
00:12:57They're called inmate lovers. You're an inmate lover.
00:13:00I have some fear. What kind of repercussions will I get for coming on and talking about this?
00:13:07I took an oath when I graduated from nursing school and it's that you do no harm.
00:13:14But women's become numbers. You don't get names. And that's what makes it easy to abuse them.
00:13:21I was sitting down in the middle of the yard. I see this young African-American girl walk out of the medical building and she's holding her abdomen area.
00:13:43And I said, I know it's not my business, but what kind of surgery did you have?
00:13:49She said, I had to get a partial hysterectomy. I said, for what?
00:13:53She said, oh, they said I had abnormal cells. And then that's when the light bulb went off.
00:14:01Why is it all of a sudden we got all of these reproductive problems?
00:14:05That's when I was like, oh, no, this don't sound right.
00:14:10I made a phone call back to Cynthia. I think that they've been doing this to other women.
00:14:18I started carrying a briefcase with form so I could help people contact just as now.
00:14:27Thanks to Kelly's organizing, we were able to uncover a dozen instances of people being sterilized during other kinds of surgeries.
00:14:42The room is kind of hot. Yeah, it is. Thank you for meeting with me today. So if you could summarize what happened in terms of the surgery you had.
00:14:54I put in a request to see the doctor because I had bad cramps. And he said, you have fibroid tumors and severe endometriosis. So that causes a higher risk of cervical cancer.
00:15:09He talked me into a hysterectomy.
00:15:12Four years later, I went to an OBGYN doctor. I asked him, did I have tumors and endometriosis? And he said, I don't see any of that on here.
00:15:30You gave me a hysterectomy for severe cramps.
00:15:37He did a pelvic exam.
00:15:39He gave me some kind of test and said I had some fibroid.
00:15:42I was told that I had cancer cells.
00:15:45They told me that I had to have my ovaries removed. I had no choice.
00:15:49We actually used 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.
00:16:14It's usually impossible to find representation for people who are harmed in prison because the cases are both too difficult and too costly. And no attorneys will take them.
00:16:25In Kelly's case, the harm was so egregious that we were able to secure pro bono one of the best law firms in the state to represent her.
00:16:35Although the fight was in me, I was very much intimidated by whom I was going up against.
00:16:41I saw that you had a number of health issues after surgery.
00:16:45I felt like I was losing a lot of weight at the time. I was in a lot of pain. I thought that I was dying.
00:16:52What did you weigh when you went into prison?
00:16:54Like 235 pounds.
00:16:58What was the least that you weighed?
00:17:00118 pounds.
00:17:02The doctor thought maybe I was a hypochondriac. And he said that I should be happy that I had weight, lost weight. So many women would love to have lost the amount of weight that I've lost.
00:17:15One doctor told me, well, how do you expect for someone to treat you if you are suing them?
00:17:24I'm going to bounce around on it. Other than the offense that you're currently in on, did you have any other convictions?
00:17:30No.
00:17:31The circumstances have led to your current incarceration. Tell me about that.
00:17:40Do you need to take a break?
00:17:43They would have her recount everything about her commitment events because they're looking for evidence of her being someone who lies, of her being someone who is lacking of character.
00:17:56How many times did you receive medical treatment for injuries you suffered as a result of domestic violence?
00:18:02Numerous. I can't, I don't, I don't have a specific number.
00:18:08Can you give me an estimate? 5, 10, 20?
00:18:13You know, my heart had already been broken. My spirit had already been crushed. It was, I didn't, I didn't have nothing to lose.
00:18:28My attorneys postponed the trial until I actually paroled.
00:18:34I felt like I was going to get a real chance at, I don't know, I just thought that, like, maybe this was the beginning of the tables turning.
00:18:47The smoking gun in her case was that they cut off the blood supply to her ovaries and removed them, dissected them, and they were never supposed to do any of that.
00:18:59And you knew that your ovaries produced the eggs and an egg was required to have a baby?
00:19:06Yes.
00:19:07And your complaint, it's alleged that if you'd have known there was a possibility that your ovaries might have been removed during the surgery that you would not have consented to it?
00:19:15Yes.
00:19:16Was the plan that if he found cancer at surgery that he was going to, at that same surgery, do a partial hysterectomy?
00:19:22Well, that was my, that was my understanding.
00:19:25She consented to removing everything if and only if she had cancer and it had spread and was invasive.
00:19:33She didn't have cancer.
00:19:35At any point while you were at Madera Community Hospital, did anybody tell you that all of your ovaries had been removed?
00:19:41No.
00:19:42When was the first time a doctor told you that you may be missing your ovaries?
00:19:45No one ever told me that.
00:19:46No medical doctors ever said that to you?
00:19:47No.
00:19:48The jury was predominantly white from Fresno County.
00:19:56I'm looking at this jury hoping that they would say, this is wrong.
00:20:03No matter what or why she was there, she didn't deserve this to happen to her.
00:20:09After a seven day trial, the jury believed the doctor's versions of events.
00:20:15That Kelly knew something was wrong at the end of the surgery.
00:20:19That she then missed the time she had to bring a claim under the statute of limitations.
00:20:25And they used that to just dismiss all of her claims.
00:20:30I watched my lead attorney, as well as her team, walk out the room and tears begin to roll down their eyes.
00:20:43And I just looked at them and I said, thank you for fighting for me.
00:20:50Even if it was just for the fight.
00:20:55Question 43, if you found for plaintiff on any of her claims and found that those claims were not barred by any statute of limitations, what total damages do you award Ms. Thomas?
00:21:09Zero dollars.
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00:21:45Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:22:15Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:22:45It was hard.
00:22:48When I came home, they were 16 and 18 years old.
00:22:55I began to hear from my children, you didn't have to go to prison, you chose to.
00:23:00I said, did they ever tell you how much I loved you?
00:23:06Did they ever tell you of what I did in order to make sure that a hand was never laid on you?
00:23:12I posted this up on my Facebook, and it said, this is what domestic violence looks like.
00:23:26Looking at this picture, you can never see that I was a victim of domestic violence.
00:23:30Because it looks like we're madly in love, you know?
00:23:34Here, I'll get the door for you.
00:23:58That was a rotten egg, too.
00:24:09Okay then.
00:24:10I don't know if I want to pick up the next one.
00:24:12This one's okay.
00:24:13My mom is eccentric.
00:24:28My mom is weird.
00:24:32Professionally, she's a person who gets people out of prison, and for fun, she's just all like, bleh, and spies us out.
00:24:42She talks to people, and then she writes stuff on the computer, and then she makes sure people does stuff.
00:24:48She has meetings a lot.
00:24:50And she goes to a prison in the desert a lot.
00:24:53And then she'd cry.
00:24:55She cries a lot.
00:24:56For a long time.
00:24:57A lot.
00:25:00Activism's very labor-intensive and annoying, and I would not do it.
00:25:06It's important, but boring.
00:25:08Yeah.
00:25:09I'd rather do genetics.
00:25:10Ditto.
00:25:11You don't even know what genetics are.
00:25:13I know, right?
00:25:14Okay.
00:25:20I grew up in a really controlled household.
00:25:24My house was sort of museum-perfect, photo-ready at all times.
00:25:31And doing things that were just in the face of what social norms and standards were was very key to my teenage years of rebelling against my household.
00:25:41I was the only girl in my entire school with a mohawk.
00:25:44There were kids in my school who were like, why do you look so weird?
00:25:48If you just did, why do you do this?
00:25:53I found a sense of community and camaraderie with teens that were living and working on the streets.
00:26:01We used to hang out by the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and snarl and make faces with all of our punk regalia on and charge like five bucks a picture from tourists.
00:26:12So there could be something as innocent as that to people selling drugs, to people selling sex, basically doing whatever they had to do to get by.
00:26:22You couldn't hang out with kids in the 1980s in the emergence of the HIV epidemic and not understand the horrors of policing, the horrors of what happens when people don't have access to health care, the horrors of racism, all of this stuff all intertwined.
00:26:40I could be with those kids in the same street corner and my life was going to turn out differently because of my class privilege and racial privilege.
00:26:49And so I felt like it behooved me to do something to change that.
00:26:56We were all really optimistic about Kelly's case.
00:27:12It seemed like one of those rare instances where we really could see justice happen.
00:27:17When she lost, it was just devastating.
00:27:20And then suddenly, a whistleblower sent us the minutes of a recent committee meeting of the California Department of Corrections.
00:27:32I was trying to figure out what to search for, and I thought for sure it would be hidden.
00:27:36And then I saw the header, birth control and sterilization, right there.
00:27:42Their research showed it would be very cost effective to sterilize women during labor and delivery.
00:27:46They were discussing within their meeting about how to reclassify tubal ligation as medically necessary in order for it to be paid for by the state.
00:27:57Federal and state laws prohibit sterilizing people in prison for the purpose of birth control.
00:28:03But they were doing it anyway.
00:28:06So we sent a list of questions to the federal receivership.
00:28:10The whole job of that office is to make sure the laws are followed in health care delivery in the prisons.
00:28:16One of the questions we've had, they in fact started sterilizing women during labor and delivery.
00:28:23And the response was that, yes, they were doing that at two women's prisons.
00:28:28This was signed by the federal receiver himself.
00:28:32And could he be so clueless that he wouldn't even know that he had just, like, stuck his foot in his mouth?
00:28:38Any hearing that came up that even touched on women's prisons, I would go.
00:28:48So there's a federal law that made it illegal for any entity that gets federal dollars to sterilize people for the purpose of birth control who are in prisons.
00:28:57And then I would present people the minutes, and I would say, hey, this state has recommended this.
00:29:03This is outrageous.
00:29:04This is illegal under federal law.
00:29:06They see that as a cost-effective moment, an opportune moment in which to sterilize people.
00:29:12We're assured that, no, no, that was just something that people talked about in that meeting,
00:29:17but they actually weren't going to do, or it was just an aside.
00:29:20It wasn't a big deal.
00:29:22They're not actually doing that.
00:29:24Just don't wear your pretty little heads.
00:29:25We were met with comments like, well, those women wouldn't really want to have more children anyway, would they?
00:29:41I was in between projects.
00:29:45So I was, you know, kind of prospecting, and CNN was playing in the background.
00:29:53Tonight, I have a report on a really disturbing chapter in our history, one that's a lot more recent than you might think.
00:29:59So we're talking about eugenics, a word which is obviously typically associated with Nazi Germany.
00:30:03But there was a large eugenics movement in America before and after World War II.
00:30:08The goal?
00:30:09To rid the country of the feeble-minded.
00:30:12Disability, race, and gender were the criteria by the 1930s.
00:30:17Thirty states had passed laws allowing for coercive sterilization.
00:30:23But California was in a league of its own.
00:30:26The Golden State sterilized 20,000 people.
00:30:29That blew my mind.
00:30:32More people were sterilized in California than any other state in the country.
00:30:38The Germans actually came over to California to study California's program and then used the lessons to create their eugenics program in Nazi Germany.
00:30:56After World War II, eugenics goes sort of underground.
00:31:01The distribution of people is far off balance.
00:31:05High birth rates go hand in hand with low incomes.
00:31:08It became more a policy of population control through birth control policy, welfare policy.
00:31:17And now it was targeted mostly at women of color.
00:31:20Got enough children, what do we do?
00:31:23Got enough children, what do we do?
00:31:25There are government-sponsored campaigns to sterilize indigenous women, women on Puerto Rico, Mexican-origin women in California, as well as black women in the United States.
00:31:39You're saying sterilize the woman if she's had more than two illegitimate children?
00:31:42Right.
00:31:43If she's on welfare?
00:31:44Absolutely.
00:31:45Last week, a black Alabama couple filed a $1 million damage suit against the government,
00:31:50charging that their two daughters had been sterilized without their informed consent.
00:31:53I put an X on a piece of paper and she told me, said they were going to give them some shots.
00:32:01That's what she told me.
00:32:03Why were they giving you the shots in the first place?
00:32:06It would keep them up from having children.
00:32:09They said they didn't want us to have no children.
00:32:12Did it hurt you?
00:32:13Doctors around the country performed hysterectomies on young black women just to practice hysterectomies.
00:32:26Tens of thousands of Americans were operated on against their will or without their consent.
00:32:31The government today announced strict new rules to protect people who are sterilized.
00:32:36Require written, informed consent to affect more than 100,000 persons a year.
00:32:41Minors under age 21, welfare mothers and others.
00:32:44The idea sparked in my head that I would spend some time looking at historical eugenics in California.
00:32:54I had started to Google and I saw an article that Cynthia Chandler had written.
00:33:01So I immediately called her up.
00:33:03And I was like, is it true that there are people in the prisons getting sterilized?
00:33:10And she said, of course it's true.
00:33:14We've heard from a lot of people about the surgeries that are happening on the inside.
00:33:20What a hysterectomy is, is the removal of your uterus.
00:33:24They typically would take the fallopian tubes as well and possibly the ovaries.
00:33:29When the ovaries are removed and there's that big drop in estrogen,
00:33:34people can have a lot of different symptoms.
00:33:35And having a lot of hot flashes, big mood changes, and your period stops.
00:33:41And then another thing that we were hearing from people was tubal ligation.
00:33:44The surgeon will cut the fallopian tubes.
00:33:47We've heard from individuals who were asked to sign forms when they were being put under anesthesia.
00:33:53If the doctor is asking repeatedly and you don't say yes, they might just go ahead and do it anyway.
00:33:58Especially if you're having a C-section, right?
00:34:01Because your reproductive organs, all of this good stuff,
00:34:04it's already out on the table, basically, literally.
00:34:08It would not be difficult, you know, cut and cauterize your tubes if they wanted to.
00:34:13And you don't know that you can't have more children in the future.
00:34:18I was given over six of my sins, and I was pregnant.
00:34:34So I asked the judge if I could either be sent to a mother-infant program instead of going to prison.
00:34:43That way I could avoid giving birth in prison and being separated from my newborn baby.
00:34:49And she didn't want to do that.
00:34:54They made me have a C-section.
00:34:57And I kept asking them, why do I have to have a C-section?
00:35:01They said because of security purposes.
00:35:06You're going to do major surgery on me and cut open my body for security purposes?
00:35:11I get to Madera County Hospital.
00:35:16I'm handcuffed to the bed, cut open, under anesthesia, had an epidural.
00:35:22I'm just majorly drugged up to where I don't even know probably what day of the week it is.
00:35:32The doctor had me sign a form.
00:35:36He said, are we doing a tubal ligation here?
00:35:38That's something you're supposed to sit down and discuss in the office prior to the surgery.
00:35:44That's not something you just throw on me as you're cutting me open.
00:35:49And I declined.
00:35:51And I couldn't even sign it, so I just put an X.
00:35:55And I have no idea what I asked.
00:35:57We started putting in a series of Public Record Act requests to get the numbers and the data
00:36:09on how many people were sterilized.
00:36:13So this is all the data.
00:36:14This is vaginal deliveries and C-sections.
00:36:16Right.
00:36:17It's a little fishy to imagine that multiple people would be giving birth in the same day,
00:36:33also having C-sections and also choosing to have tubal ligations.
00:36:36So you can see there's ligated overdux add-on, and that kind of kills me, the add-on part.
00:36:46It wasn't necessary for the surgery, but we thought we'd just take away your reproductive capacity.
00:36:50Justice now had gotten a partial list of tubal ligation surgeries that have been reimbursed to the doctor.
00:37:05So the state were paying the doctors for having performed these surgeries.
00:37:11As an investigative reporter, I've seen spreadsheets that have fields removed.
00:37:17I was like, there's more to this data than what you guys have.
00:37:24There is a culture of secrecy in California.
00:37:29They don't call it secrecy, they call it privacy.
00:37:32Not only do you have women in prison, you have laws around protecting their confidentiality,
00:37:39but then you have medical privacy.
00:37:40There's just layers and layers of plausible reasons why somebody can say no.
00:37:49So I was getting doors slammed and stonewalled left and right.
00:37:56Then it became a question of how do I put a human face on this data?
00:38:02Justice now had access on the inside that I didn't have.
00:38:07And so I was very anxious, you know, hook me up here.
00:38:13Give me access to somebody who can help me.
00:38:18In 2006, I was sentenced to Valley State Prison for Women.
00:38:23I was 21 years old and I was pregnant at the time.
00:38:26Someone asked me to work out at the prison in the OB department.
00:38:33And I'm like, OB department?
00:38:35You have an OB department in the prison?
00:38:38Yeah.
00:38:39You know, women come in pregnant.
00:38:41And I'm like, oh, okay.
00:38:46That's a new thought.
00:38:47See, when you go way over on this side, there's just not much fluid.
00:38:52You've had this happen to you before.
00:38:54Yeah.
00:38:54I was there being seen by Dr. Heinrich.
00:38:58He was eating while I was, you know, laid up on the bed waiting to be examined.
00:39:03He would be doing a vaginal exam and be smacking his lips.
00:39:09And that just grossed the patients out.
00:39:13And I'm like, is this the best time to be eating that sandwich while you're doing a pap smear?
00:39:21He'd be working without gloves on or eating popcorn.
00:39:25It was just filthy.
00:39:26He had a history of lawsuits that resulted in settlements where the allegations were really serious.
00:39:39We're talking basic level mistakes that resulted in permanently deformed children or permanently deformed women.
00:39:51I ended up working at the infirmary.
00:39:53I would have to give the inmates urine cups and write their name on it.
00:39:59While I was working in the infirmary, Dr. Heinrich made a comment that some people shouldn't have kids
00:40:04because they keep coming back and forth to prison.
00:40:07He sees women that come back and forth to prison all the time, and they keep coming back pregnant.
00:40:15Heinrich would look at their file.
00:40:17He would figure out if this was their first time or if this was a repeat time.
00:40:21And then he would make a judgment call to pitch the woman on getting their tubes tied.
00:40:27He would become somewhat pushy about it and insistent.
00:40:34I talk to the nurses all the time, and I don't know if maybe they played a factor in softening up Dr. Heinrich not to have me sterilized,
00:40:44because it was my first time in prison.
00:40:45One of the challenges with this story and the question of eugenics, you ultimately have to get to intent.
00:40:57You have inmates making allegations against people who have PhDs, right?
00:41:03And so the question then becomes, how do you know that the crook is telling the truth?
00:41:11So I'm calling Dr. Heinrich, and I get a woman.
00:41:15She says he's not going to talk.
00:41:17She slams the phone down.
00:41:19But I'm getting desperate.
00:41:22And I decide to just get in my car and drive to his house.
00:41:26And I just knock on the door, and I'm drenched in sweat.
00:41:32And he came to the door, and I said, hi, Dr. Heinrich.
00:41:36My name is Corey Johnson.
00:41:38I'm with the Center for Investigative Reporting.
00:41:41Can I have some water?
00:41:44And he stopped, and he said, okay, come on in.
00:41:47And as I get the water, I pull out my laptop, and I show him a spreadsheet of costs.
00:41:56And I say to him, point blank, the rules say that sterilization procedures were banned.
00:42:03And according to this spreadsheet, there is well over $100,000 that has been paid of taxpayer money on a procedure that's banned.
00:42:14And then that's when he said, well, that's cheaper than welfare.
00:42:17A bombshell report from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
00:42:22Female inmates in California were illegally sterilized.
00:42:25Doctors pressured them into tubal ligations.
00:42:28While they were on an operating table, heavily sedated.
00:42:31That's absolutely not the appropriate time to be attempting to get consent for a major life-changing surgery.
00:42:37Prison officials claim it helped save the state money.
00:42:39It's like a drop in the bucket compared to, quote, what you save in welfare, paying for these unwanted children as they procreated more.
00:42:47And these are, by the way, mostly repeat offenders who were sterilized.
00:42:50Where are they getting pregnant in prison?
00:42:52Like, that's the first question we have to address.
00:42:54Disgusting.
00:42:55No, absolutely not.
00:42:56When the story came out, within hours, there were at least 700 comments.
00:43:02Within a day, there was over 2,000.
00:43:05Why does the state need to give its consent if the women already are?
00:43:11We give our criminals way too many rights when they go to prison.
00:43:15People get up in arms and say, this is like eugenics.
00:43:18If they can't stay out of jail and raise their kids without our assistance, why reproduce?
00:43:23Can you explain why you consider these coercive?
00:43:26Since when do prisoners' rights trump the right of the state?
00:43:30Unless you can step forward and show that you have the financial wherewithal to take care of the child, I'm going to prohibit you from having a job.
00:43:38They got real ugly.
00:43:41There were days where I just would not look at the comments because I didn't want to be messed up in the head all day.
00:43:48Okay, if everybody would take a seat, we're going to get started.
00:44:01The fact that it is the 21st century and we have to ask our state auditor to see if women in California are being coercively sterilized is absolutely unconscionable and frankly revolting.
00:44:14Joyce Hayhoe representing California Correctional Health Care Services.
00:44:20First of all, we support this audit request.
00:44:22I certainly as chair appreciate that you're here to support the audit.
00:44:26I think the more important question is why you didn't know.
00:44:30The receiver was put in place specifically to come in and protect the constitutional rights of inmates.
00:44:38Mr. Kelso was not aware until it was brought to my attention.
00:44:41Receiver himself was not aware.
00:44:43Not until June.
00:44:44Of what was happening under his watch.
00:44:46That's your testimony today.
00:44:47Yes, yes.
00:44:48Okay.
00:44:49I do believe that the receiver's office itself was in fact aware of that before then.
00:44:54And if you go from September 10th, 2008 and move forward to 2010, over 50 people were illegally sterilized during labor and delivery in that period.
00:45:03Medical doctors thought that it was okay to sterilize women without their permission.
00:45:09No, medical doctors thought it was okay to sterilize women having been given informed consent.
00:45:17And so most of-
00:45:19Isn't that the same as without their permission?
00:45:20I'm confused on-
00:45:21Women were signing consent forms?
00:45:24I'd love to see a copy of that form to see if I could even understand it, let alone a woman that's under duress.
00:45:29But this is unbelievable.
00:45:31That one should not be asked in that environment to give up a fundamental right to bear children.
00:45:37I've had the displeasure of a dozen times going through people's medical records and learning that they were sterilized during unrelated medical procedures.
00:45:47And they didn't know it.
00:45:48The state has admitted that they have done these illegal surgeries, but we don't actually know who they did them on.
00:45:53I'd like to prioritize this audit so that the auditor could put this at the front of the line and get to it as quickly as possible.
00:46:05Okay, I would remind members of the committee, please come to the committee so we establish the war.
00:46:09It was incredibly affirming to hear the legislature call these abuses outrageous.
00:46:15We've been working for years to get the government to take this seriously.
00:46:18And finally, the state legislators are standing up and doing what needs to be done.
00:46:22The Department of Corrections and the receivers claimed usually there was very little personal knowledge on the part of prison administrators of this happening.
00:46:30It's 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.
00:46:38Just so that that's clear, they're not performed at the institution.
00:46:41Doctors statewide felt for whatever reason that it was being sanctioned by the department.
00:46:47There may be doctors who aren't aware of the policy or the federal law issue.
00:46:52I can well imagine an outside physician in good faith thinking that this is a matter of reproductive autonomy,
00:46:59not knowing the conversation that has been going on about the inability to give valid consent in prison.
00:47:07For inmates to sign consent is a really big deal because they're seen as a ward of the court
00:47:12and not really being allowed to enter into contracts.
00:47:16You would think there would have been a red flag when the billing departments received those bills.
00:47:20When I arrived at the receivership in 2008, we did not use standard medical billing codes.
00:47:28And so there really was no easy way for us to know what we were paying for.
00:47:32To do a medical procedure, there's incredible layers of paperwork that has to happen, that has to be vetted by a medical committee at each prison.
00:47:52So I would suspect that many high-up officials were in fact aware of what was going on and potentially part of it.
00:47:59Everything had to go through committee, and everything had to be documented as to why this was necessary.
00:48:11At the point that Dr. Heinrich was hired, sterilization procedures had been going on for years at multiple prisons.
00:48:20He strongly believed that there were women that were gaming the system and that needed to be stopped.
00:48:26He was cognizant of costs, and trying to save the state and the prison system money.
00:48:37That attitude tracked precisely to the historical attitude of the California leaders of the eugenics movement.
00:48:47They had always used cost-benefit as the justifier for why they were doing what they were doing.
00:48:55And so in that way, Heinrich was part of a legacy.
00:49:00If you just stop and make him the face of it, do you really get at the problem?
00:49:05Thank you.
00:49:19Thank you, dear God.
00:49:20I hope you're getting there.
00:49:21You too.
00:49:22This is my space for right now.
00:49:44Of course, I desire to have my own home, but my mom's older, and, you know, I feel good about being able to be here with her.
00:49:52I wasn't able to be here with my dad.
00:49:55I lost my dad when I was in prison.
00:49:59So for God to give me an opportunity to be with my mom in her latter years, even though we fight like cats and dogs,
00:50:05but at the same time, she's tough too.
00:50:07So she's one of my best opponents.
00:50:11My relationship with my oldest son is very strained.
00:50:16He remembers some of the episodes of domestic violence.
00:50:21I had to back up and give my son the space that he needs in order to figure out what happened to not only him but us.
00:50:28How you doing?
00:50:34What's up with it?
00:50:36I'm all right.
00:50:37You all right?
00:50:37But my youngest son doesn't remember the violence and the interaction with me as a mother.
00:50:44Listen, I'm supposed to come down there.
00:50:47Remember, I'm trying to get Anthony to come with me,
00:50:50and I think that at times that he look at the fact that me and you, we get along a little bit better
00:50:56because you just let shit, if it happened, it happened.
00:50:59Bygones is bygones.
00:51:00Okay, we passed that.
00:51:01A lot of the shit that we been through, I feel like we cool.
00:51:04We got to get closer together.
00:51:06Right.
00:51:06Thank God for this technology of FaceTime.
00:51:10All right then, baby, I love you.
00:51:13But to me, the FaceTime is a glass window like when I was incarcerated.
00:51:18Instead of me having all these scars from the things that happened to me,
00:51:27I want, like, things that symbolize my victories.
00:51:31And so to me, like, this with the three butterflies that represent me and my two sons.
00:51:37And as soon as I got this tattoo, I just started feeling liberated, you know.
00:51:41It's me taking the power back on my body and putting things there that represent who I am
00:51:49as opposed to what I've been through.
00:51:56Morning, everybody.
00:51:58Good morning.
00:51:59All right.
00:52:00We made a plan to speak to different legislators that we thought would be strategic,
00:52:07and Senator Jackson was at the top of my list.
00:52:09Boy, this thing moves slowly, doesn't it?
00:52:11She showed up to the hearing when she isn't on that committee.
00:52:15That doesn't happen.
00:52:17Legislators that are on committees don't show up to their hearings.
00:52:20Legislators that are on committees are twiddling their thumbs and falling asleep.
00:52:25Great.
00:52:25Thanks.
00:52:26Okay.
00:52:26Bye-bye.
00:52:28When I first learned of what was going on, I was absolutely horrified.
00:52:33The fact that these women were being treated like objects and as non-human beings,
00:52:40how could this be happening?
00:52:43We had outlawed sterilization since 1979,
00:52:47and many of us assumed that it had ended at that time.
00:52:50A blight on our state history, but nonetheless had stopped.
00:52:53So this bill was to make it very, very clear
00:52:56that doctors cannot perform these procedures in prison, period.
00:53:02Did you know that tubal ligations were illegal?
00:53:05I did not know that, actually.
00:53:07If I had known that that was illegal, I would not have obtained the consent for it.
00:53:17I'm typing up a survey, breaking down each different component of the bill
00:53:21and asking people on the inside if they agree or disagree.
00:53:25And then there's room for people to write more about what it is that they feel.
00:53:28Keep up the great work, or this is why I disagree with a particular part.
00:53:32They just have room to explain that if they want to.
00:53:35Call from an inmate at the Central California Women's Facility.
00:53:40Hey, how are you?
00:53:41Hi, how are you doing?
00:53:42Justice Now is the only organization that we know of
00:53:45that has people who are currently imprisoned on the board.
00:53:48Do you feel like folks are feeling good about the bill,
00:53:52or they're having some significant concerns?
00:53:55Well, I think for the most part, we were handing out the questionnaires,
00:53:59and we were trying to have town hall meetings
00:54:02to make sure that key organizers were able to get those questionnaires into the building.
00:54:07And then we were going to meet up with those people on the yard to get the questionnaires back.
00:54:11And how has that been going?
00:54:13We know that some people are afraid of discussing it.
00:54:16One, for fear of retaliation.
00:54:19And there's just been a lot of pressure they feel to be quiet sometimes,
00:54:24even though they'll talk to us privately.
00:54:27We're going to be bringing to the legislature
00:54:29actual words and experiences from people inside.
00:54:33And so that information that you're gathering is so crucial.
00:54:38Thank you.
00:54:39Thank you so much.
00:54:39If I was naive, I really didn't know what to do.
00:54:48I just went along with the doctor because I figured he knew best.
00:54:51I didn't know that I won't have children.
00:54:55I've been told, well, you're pre-menopausal.
00:54:58You're past breeding age like I was a cow.
00:55:00I would have loved to have a child.
00:55:01I've seen it happening more so with Hispanic, African-American.
00:55:05You don't hear too much of it happening in Caucasian descent at all.
00:55:09We're women in prison.
00:55:10Who cares if they mess up our reproductive system?
00:55:13We're prisoners.
00:55:15We shouldn't be able to reproduce anyway.
00:55:16There's certain things that I picked up in prison
00:55:24that I believe were positive habits.
00:55:28This is a habit that I got out of prison
00:55:31is after we used the sink, we sprayed it down,
00:55:35which is more people don't do that.
00:55:37But, you know, when you're in prison,
00:55:39you have this germaphobe, you've developed this germaphobe
00:55:42of, uh, you got eight girls using the same sink.
00:55:49I only got one week left for school,
00:55:52and it seemed like it's been the toughest month,
00:55:56and I'm only at an undergrad level.
00:55:59I can just imagine how it's going to be me
00:56:03trying to go after my master's.
00:56:08Do you want me to complete your associate's degree?
00:56:10I think, uh, what?
00:56:12Objection's off your speculation.
00:56:14Yeah, go ahead.
00:56:16She's objecting for the record.
00:56:17You can still go ahead and answer the question.
00:56:19Oh, okay.
00:56:20Um, I'm hoping, is it, can I hope?
00:56:23You certainly can.
00:56:25Um, I'm hoping to be completed
00:56:28at least a semester coming out of incarceration.
00:56:32I have less than a year left.
00:56:34Is there a particular area or emphasis?
00:56:37Oh, nice.
00:56:38Social studies.
00:56:40Have you given me a thought
00:56:42as to what you wanted to do with that degree?
00:56:47I really would like to work with battered women
00:56:49and troubled young teen girls.
00:56:58Welcome back to The Dialogue.
00:57:00We are talking about the effects of trauma,
00:57:03abuse, and domestic violence on the Black community,
00:57:06starting with Miss Kelly Dillon.
00:57:08She is a survivor of domestic violence
00:57:10and an advocate for prevention and intervention.
00:57:13Most people see victims as very fragile,
00:57:16docile, helpless, white.
00:57:20When a police officer approaches a female African-American or Latina,
00:57:29they automatically ask them,
00:57:30are you gang-affiliated?
00:57:3292% of all the women that are in prison
00:57:35are in prison because of domestic violence.
00:57:38I have already been sexually assaulted.
00:57:40I had already been held hostage in the house for three days.
00:57:43When I called the police, they said,
00:57:45you don't look like a victim.
00:57:46So I had lost hope in the people
00:57:48that was supposed to dare to protect and serve me.
00:57:50At that point, I had had it.
00:57:52Either I was going to get out by foot
00:57:54or in a body bag.
00:57:55I just want it out.
00:58:02We've gotten over 400 responses on this survey so far,
00:58:07and there are more coming in every day.
00:58:08And that's pretty significant when you consider
00:58:10that there are approximately 3,000 people inside CCWF.
00:58:17I did not know that I had another choice.
00:58:19Yeah, I was not given follow-up care.
00:58:25It's, you know, just a line of agree, agree, agree, agree.
00:58:30People came out of the woodwork through that survey.
00:58:33It goes deeper than even we
00:58:37who've been working on this for a decade now.
00:58:41If you'd go ahead and present SB 1135, please.
00:58:47My name is Kelly Dunsmore,
00:58:48and I am reading a statement
00:58:50from somebody inside.
00:58:52At Valley State Prison for Women,
00:58:53my gynecologist tried to get me
00:58:55to have a hysterectomy.
00:58:57You take a big risk by speaking out
00:58:59on pieces that happen to you behind bars.
00:59:02In prison, you worry about filing
00:59:03a complaint against a doctor
00:59:04because the threat of retaliation is always there.
00:59:07But I can't sit as a woman
00:59:09and not speak out.
00:59:12The United Nations Convention on Human Rights
00:59:14talks about the right to family.
00:59:15I understand that we're where we're at,
00:59:17but I'm still a human being.
00:59:19We are not animals.
00:59:20We are not animals.
00:59:21We are not animals.
00:59:22We are not animals.
00:59:22We are not animals.
00:59:23We are not animals.
00:59:23This is not okay.
00:59:24Please pass this bill
00:59:25as a step in the right direction
00:59:27towards universal human rights,
00:59:29not just human rights
00:59:29for people outside of prison.
00:59:31I was the attorney
00:59:35who actually reviewed
00:59:36Kelly Dillon's medical records
00:59:37and had the displeasure
00:59:38of having to communicate to her
00:59:40that she had been sterilized
00:59:41without her knowledge or consent.
00:59:43She was one of ten women
00:59:45in the California prison system
00:59:47that I've had that same conversation with,
00:59:50all of whom were women of color,
00:59:52who were darker-skinned women of color
00:59:53and or transgender people.
00:59:56I'm incredibly heartfelt
00:59:57that this is now being taken seriously,
00:59:59and I strongly support this bill.
01:00:01Thank you.
01:00:02Are there speakers
01:00:03in opposition to the bill?
01:00:05We represent 5,500 obstetricians
01:00:07and gynecologists here in California.
01:00:09We oppose the bill
01:00:10because by completely banning sterilization,
01:00:13we are taking away a woman's right
01:00:14to consent to a procedure.
01:00:16I've had patients
01:00:17with complex heart conditions.
01:00:19If they were undergoing a cesarean section,
01:00:21I would recommend
01:00:22for tubal sterilization,
01:00:23given the risk
01:00:25of any subsequent pregnancy
01:00:26to their health.
01:00:27for every sterilization procedure
01:00:29in which I have personally participated in,
01:00:32the patient is asked not once,
01:00:34not twice,
01:00:34but dozens of times
01:00:35by multiple providers
01:00:36whether or not she would like
01:00:38to proceed with the sterilization.
01:00:41We were shocked
01:00:42that our opposition came
01:00:44from the American College
01:00:45of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
01:00:48Very few of their members,
01:00:49let alone their leadership,
01:00:50work in prisons.
01:00:51The priority of ACOG
01:00:53is the health
01:00:54and well-being of our patients,
01:00:55and we are hopeful
01:00:56that we can find a process
01:00:57through which these women
01:00:59will have access
01:01:00to sterilization.
01:01:02Their testimony
01:01:02created a tremendous obstacle
01:01:04for this bill.
01:01:06They want people
01:01:07to make reproductive choices,
01:01:09but we don't know
01:01:09what goes on in prison.
01:01:11The prison is a black hole.
01:01:14Inside a prison setting,
01:01:15to ask somebody
01:01:15to make a decision like that
01:01:17is not a really good idea.
01:01:19People have total control over you.
01:01:21If you don't follow the rules
01:01:22or anybody simply says
01:01:24that you didn't follow the rule,
01:01:25you can have time added
01:01:27to the time you're already serving.
01:01:29We needed to make our case
01:01:32that indeed these procedures
01:01:33were being done without consent.
01:01:37You know, we've been having
01:01:38a really hard time
01:01:40identifying who the people were
01:01:43who were sterilized
01:01:44while they were giving birth, right?
01:01:46And as opposed to folks like you
01:01:48who were sterilized
01:01:49during other operations.
01:01:51Okay.
01:01:51And that's one of the reasons
01:01:52why it would be so key
01:01:54to feature you.
01:01:56I think it's really
01:01:57our best hope
01:01:57of stopping the sterilization
01:01:59and we could practice
01:02:01what your testimony
01:02:01is going to be.
01:02:02Do I have to go in front
01:02:03of like a jury
01:02:04or something like that?
01:02:05Like, what do you mean testify?
01:02:07When a legislator creates a bill,
01:02:09it has to travel
01:02:10in front of a bunch of committees
01:02:12before it goes before
01:02:13the whole Senate to vote.
01:02:15And then...
01:02:16I have an obligation
01:02:17to back Cynthia
01:02:19because if it was not for her,
01:02:21I would not have found out
01:02:22everything that had happened to me.
01:02:25But I couldn't go through
01:02:26like another interview,
01:02:28testimony, hearing, or anything
01:02:31because once I'm done
01:02:33and I'm, you know,
01:02:34I leave and I go home
01:02:35and everybody go home,
01:02:36but I'm left now
01:02:38with having regurgitated
01:02:39all of those emotions
01:02:40and feelings
01:02:41and now they're here,
01:02:43they're here and here,
01:02:44and then no one's there
01:02:46to help me process it.
01:02:49Yes, I have the power
01:02:51to change lives
01:02:53with the awareness
01:02:53what happened to me,
01:02:55but it's still my story
01:02:56and I still own it
01:02:57and I still get to...
01:02:59I still have the say-so
01:03:00of who I want to tell it to
01:03:02and why I want to tell it.
01:03:03It belongs to me.
01:03:05The bill isn't moving forward
01:03:21and it's just exhausting everyone.
01:03:24It's not just me,
01:03:25it's the whole organization
01:03:27and I think on an organizational
01:03:29leadership perspective,
01:03:31it's like how long can I continue
01:03:32not just to push myself,
01:03:33but how long can I continue
01:03:34to push everyone else.
01:03:43What ranking are you
01:03:45on that game now?
01:03:46Aren't you like 30?
01:03:4829.
01:03:4929 of how many people
01:03:50playing that online game?
01:03:51I can check what place
01:03:52mine is now
01:03:53because it's going to be changed.
01:03:54Hundreds of thousands.
01:03:55Hundreds of thousands?
01:03:56At least.
01:03:57My kids were telling
01:03:59their friends,
01:04:01oh yeah, that's my mom,
01:04:02the champion for everybody else.
01:04:03They're always promoting
01:04:05the leadership of people inside
01:04:06and my friends and I
01:04:07are dealing with all this
01:04:08crap at school
01:04:09and you're not helping us.
01:04:10And I was like,
01:04:11oh my gosh, you're right.
01:04:14I spend all my resources
01:04:16and basically all my capacities
01:04:17in building up other people
01:04:18that I was neglecting,
01:04:20my children.
01:04:24If this goes nowhere
01:04:26and I've lost all that time
01:04:27with my kids,
01:04:28I...
01:04:28yeah, that would just
01:04:32be a shame.
01:04:51What was your
01:04:52thought process
01:04:54as to whether or not
01:04:55you wanted to have
01:04:56more children
01:04:56when you got out?
01:04:57I had a hope
01:04:58and a possibility
01:04:59that I might find
01:05:00a man that would
01:05:02love me and treat me
01:05:03who would love me
01:05:05and that
01:05:06I might be able
01:05:08to have a family
01:05:10or a chance
01:05:14to be a mother.
01:05:15I don't know,
01:05:31I mean, I'm supposed to
01:05:32start doing this.
01:05:33Hi.
01:05:33Good to see you two.
01:05:34How you been?
01:05:36It was good.
01:05:36How are you?
01:05:37Oh, I love you.
01:05:38I'm here for that.
01:05:38Thank you.
01:05:38I'm Cammie.
01:05:39Hi, Cammie.
01:05:40Nice to meet you.
01:05:40Thank you.
01:05:41That was it.
01:05:42We ready today?
01:05:44All right.
01:05:45We're testifying in front of the Assembly Health Committee, and if it passes that committee,
01:06:14it will go to the Assembly floor, and if it passes that, then it will be going to the Governor's
01:06:19desk after that.
01:06:20So we're keeping our fingers crossed that he will see how important this is and sign the
01:06:25bill into law.
01:06:26And then moving forward with that.
01:06:27And then moving forward with that.
01:06:28And moving forward with it.
01:06:29Yeah.
01:06:30It's more so about making it okay to say, Kelly, that did happen.
01:06:35Acknowledging that it's a part of me.
01:06:38And then moving forward with that.
01:06:40And moving forward with it.
01:06:41Yeah.
01:06:42It was one thing to fight about what happened, but then it's another thing to settle with
01:06:47the fact that this is what happened and this is now who you are for the rest of your life.
01:06:54Period.
01:06:57Every time I've dated and I'm happy, I'm ecstatic about the relationship, I'm falling in love,
01:07:03and then all of a sudden it comes crashing down when they say, I would love to have a
01:07:09kid with you.
01:07:09And when they say that, then I really feel unworthy, I feel unwhole, you know, I feel ashamed.
01:07:24And so there's a part of me that's tired of feeling that way too.
01:07:39I have with me here today, Kelly Dillon.
01:07:57She is a domestic violence counselor, a gang interventionist.
01:08:01She has dedicated her life to ending violence against women in her community and also experienced
01:08:08sterilization abuse while imprisoned in here in California and is here today to share
01:08:14her story.
01:08:16I am a survivor of non-consensual, unlawful sterilization that was performed on me at
01:08:21the age of 24 in 2001 while I was an inmate in Central California Women's Facility.
01:08:28I'm here to testify that what this bill represents is real for the women that are incarcerated and
01:08:33this thing has happened to.
01:08:36I wanted a second chance at life and I wanted a second chance at being a mother.
01:08:43I trusted, I trusted this surgeon to respect and to acknowledge that I still had a future
01:08:56and that I wanted one.
01:08:58I felt like I've been robbed of the fullness that could have been given to me had this
01:09:04not happened to me.
01:09:06Did this happen to me because I was African American?
01:09:09Did it happen to me because I was a woman?
01:09:11Did it happen to me because I was an inmate?
01:09:13Or did it happen to me because I was all three?
01:09:17I was a woman.
01:09:18As I'm sitting here listening to myself, I'm saying to myself like, damn, this is a sad
01:09:23ass story.
01:09:24where the fuck is my happy ending
01:09:27I deserve
01:09:29a fresh new start
01:09:31I'm ready to fall in love
01:09:33I'm ready to be loved
01:09:36I'm ready to have a home
01:09:38I'm ready to see the world
01:09:40I'm a good person
01:09:42that a lot of
01:09:44fucked up shit has happened to
01:09:46I'm ready
01:09:47I am so
01:09:49so ready
01:09:51I just want to finish up by saying that
01:09:54this bill will help to protect other women
01:09:56who have the opportunity to be
01:09:58rehabilitated and to
01:10:00actually restore the quality of their life
01:10:02and the gift that life has to
01:10:04offer which is motherhood
01:10:06and having children
01:10:07as a survivor of non-consensual
01:10:10unlawful sterilization
01:10:11I'm asking you to approve this bill
01:10:13Catherine
01:10:16Williams with the ACLU of California in support
01:10:18I'm a
01:10:20heart-tongue of legal services for prisoners with
01:10:22children in strong support
01:10:23Rebecca Gonzalez National Association of Social Workers California chapter in support
01:10:27They all said I
01:10:29Yes
01:10:30I think so
01:10:31Oh we're not on it
01:10:35We've been here not all things
01:10:37We're a team
01:10:39This is an amazing team today
01:10:41This is an amazing team
01:10:43This is an amazing team today
01:10:50Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill bringing an end to forced prison sterilization
01:10:56The bill passed with bipartisan support
01:11:03It's criminal behavior now to do this and we've let the correction system know they're on record
01:11:09They cannot sterilize people in prison for the purpose of birth control ever again
01:11:14This bill was set of standard for the other prisons throughout the United States
01:11:21Because this is not just happening here in the state of California
01:11:23It's actually happening all over
01:11:25I've thought from the very beginning that this bill should have been called the Kelly Dillon anti-course of civilization bill
01:11:32You know, I think
01:11:34I think
01:11:35But for her inspiration and her courage early early on
01:11:39Justice now wouldn't have even been investigating this stuff
01:11:42We never would have found out about the abuses let alone would there have been a bill
01:11:46This is just the beginning
01:11:47This is just the beginning
01:11:48This is just the beginning
01:11:49This is just the beginning
01:11:55Get the fucking shoes
01:11:57Everybody look at our founder's show
01:12:04When people say, oh, we can't change the prison system
01:12:07Yes, we can
01:12:08Because we are
01:12:09We are changed
01:12:10We are proof that it can happen
01:12:12Our mission of justice now is to have formerly incarcerated and women that are on the board
01:12:19Have the chance to come into justice now and transition into bigger leadership goals
01:12:24And run justice now
01:12:26Make up your mind
01:12:28What you search you
01:12:29Is it money?
01:12:30Is it something like freedom?
01:12:33Nothing against myself
01:12:37But I can really see myself
01:12:40Come around
01:12:42Come around
01:12:43Come around
01:12:44Now I'm holding it
01:12:45I was just talking to my son, right?
01:12:48And I was telling him about the graduation
01:12:50Because I never got a chance to do those things
01:12:53The first time I didn't get a chance to graduate because of me being a teenage mom
01:12:58Then I didn't get a chance to graduate from medical assistant school because of the domestic violence and abuse
01:13:04And me coming home from prison, like this means everything to me
01:13:07I can't even tell you anything to me
01:13:10What are you doing?
01:13:11Well we're gonna touch on your record
01:13:12How are you doing?
01:13:13What do you remember living?
01:13:14Oh yeah
01:13:15How are you what you do?
01:13:16You dare call me
01:13:24I'm having fun
01:13:25es
01:13:25There you go
01:13:29Tears
01:13:30Finally
01:13:31photograph
01:13:32There's
01:13:32There's
01:13:33ển
01:13:37Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
01:14:07...but there's still so much that needs to be done.
01:14:12I'm frustrated. This isn't a bigger national conversation.
01:14:21We can't afford to forget.
01:14:26The bill was so needed because...
01:14:36...the Department of Corrections had been spitting on women's sterilization problem for years.
01:14:42But now that there's been a small victory, they're blocking advocates or anyone who's coming in from the outside...
01:14:49...from being able to come in freely to interview inmates.
01:14:54There are women today that need reproductive care but absolutely cannot get it because of the retaliation.
01:15:04The doctor told me, thanks to your fellow inmates, I'm not doing nothing.
01:15:10When they say that CDC is the belly of the beast, it's literal.
01:15:20We have yet to get an apology. We have yet to be acknowledged.
01:15:27We have to crack this thing wide open.
01:15:31CDC has to be made accountable.
01:15:35You know, part of this bill was to really highlight the illegality of these procedures.
01:15:41So, yes, to me, that's a good thing.
01:15:45As to whether I think it should be illegal?
01:15:51Not necessarily.
01:15:56Even if it's not medically necessary, it could or would, in the long run, say the state funds, like the doctor was saying.
01:16:12So, you know, was he wrong in that estimation?
01:16:17Probably not.
01:16:20Because, as I said, the ideal time to do a tubal is when you're already in there.
01:16:33It just takes a couple more minutes and a couple more snips.
01:16:37So, let's be, let's go.
01:16:58So, let's go.
01:17:00So, let's go.
01:17:05C'est parti.
01:17:35C'est parti.
01:18:05C'est parti.
01:18:06C'est parti.
01:18:07C'est parti.
01:18:08C'est parti.
01:18:09C'est parti.
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01:18:13C'est parti.
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01:18:19C'est parti.
01:18:20C'est parti.
01:18:21C'est parti.
01:18:22C'est parti.
01:18:23C'est parti.
01:18:24C'est parti.
01:18:25C'est parti.
01:18:26C'est parti.
01:18:27C'est parti.
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01:18:36C'est parti.
01:18:37C'est parti.
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01:18:39C'est parti.
01:18:40C'est parti.
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