Everyone should have the same human rights. But we as individuals get constant reminders that that’s more of a theory that something that society puts into practice. That’s a harsh reality that Kelli Dillon learns in prison. She’s one of the 92% of women in jail for fighting back against her abusive husband. In prison, the medical staff there sterilized her against her will. What separates her from the dozens of women who underwent this operation is that she again fought back. This time around she uses the legal system. Her first step was to get monetary reparations for what the doctors did to her. Erika Cohn’s documentary depicts the steps of those struggles through interviews and reenactments. And there’s a coldness in the latter reflecting Dillon’s experience, the legal system deeming her Black life as unworthy.

Cohn takes her viewers inside the prison system’s methods of forced sterilization through Dillon, one of its survivors. It interviews her lawyer, activist Cynthia Chandler, who the documentary and the critics gravitate towards instead of Dillon. It also talks to Corey Johnson. He’s one of the journalists who uncovered the negligence of the doctors and the system complicit in these sterilizations. There’s a comprehensive approach here, one that Cohn can do as she did her previous documentary The Judge. But there are some pitfalls here that may or may not be her fault. Dillon is one of 148 victims of sterilization that we know. It would have been nice to know a more accurate number of those sterilizations. We need those numbers in comparison to the number of women who actually need those sterilizations.

And that’s because those methods exist to prevent cancer and that disease’s side effects. Belly of The Beast, then, aims to show women’s solidarity in fighting sterilization. And that solidarity includes the next step in Dillon and Chandler’s fight. Both want to introduce legislation to stop those sterilizations in correctional facilities unless absolutely necessary. One of Beast‘s aims in showing that fight is to show the introduction of the bill. It then shows testimonies from people for and against the bill. One of the people against the bill is a person speaking for California’s obstetricians and gynecologists. I’m on the fence here. But there is a part of me that knows that there are more women like Dillon. And the legal system should support them even if banning sterilization might not be enough.

Belly of the Beast comes to virtual cinemas this Friday.