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When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations\u2014nearly forty years after being banned\u2014 in women\u2019s prisons, shielded by prison officials and doctors inside the correctional system, they wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. Belly of the Beast exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons, through intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people.

Kelli Dillon, who was involuntarily sterilized at the age of 24 while incarcerated, teams up with Cynthia Chandler, a human rights lawyer, to fight for reproductive justice at the world\u2019s largest women\u2019s prison, the Central California Women\u2019s Facility. As they prepare to take Kelli\u2019s case to court, they uncover a wide range of crimes occurring within the facility\u2014from inadequate access to healthcare to sexual assault to illegal sterilization\u2014the latter largely perpetrated against the facility\u2019s Black and Latinx populations.

While prison doctors and officials contend that these forced sterilizations were in each person\u2019s best interest and an overall social benefit, Chandler and Dillon call into question how these procedures continued for so long after being banned in California since 1979. Their joint efforts in exposing the atrocities carried out behind closed doors ultimately shed new, timely light on the systemic racism and violence impacting people of color in women\u2019s prisons, in a fight for reparations and justice.