Downloaded from YTS.MX
[soft inspirational music]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[mysterious music]
- [Kelli] I rememberjust looking
at all of the cows and the plains.
And at 19, thinking to myself like wow,
it's so much on this Earth that I haven't seen
and now I'm getting ready to go
spend 15 years of my life in prison.
- [Attorney] Can you speak your full name
for the record please?
- Kelli LeShawn Dillon Thomas.
- [Attorney] Dillon is your maiden name?
- Yes.
I was sentenced for shooting and killing my husband.
The most painful thing
was when the police came to get me
and having to separate between me and my children,
even though I had protected us from a monster.
- [Attorney] The blue marks are afflicted by your husband?
- Yes. - With?
- An iron.
- [Attorney] An iron?
- Yes.
- And this occurred during a fight?
- Yes.
- [Attorney] And he put the iron what, to your neck?
[soft dramatic music]
- Yes.
I'm trying to remember what my children felt like,
their skin felt like, what they breath smelled like.
[dark foreboding music] [inmates shouting]
I cannot believe that my life has come to this.
[gate banging]
I always been a fighter,
but it wasn't truly birthed until I was in prison.
[dark foreboding music]
- It's always hard to figure out what to wear to prison
because you can't wear red, green, brown, khaki, orange
or denim of any color.
When 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.
But usually visitors coming in only wear black or white.
And I decided at some point
to bring a level of levity and color into the visits.
Folks inside loved it.
They would see me coming and start giggling and laughing
about what wild shoes I had on.
There was this one correction officer
who was like, "You can't wear those shoes.
And I was like, "Can you point to the rule
that says that these violate any kind of dress code?"
All the correctional officers and the high-level folks
from the Department of Corrections
were always treating me like a small child.
And so at some point, I decided to just own it
and take on the brand of kind of being
like a tacky whipper-snapper.
[crickets chirping]
[soft solemn music]
Waking up and leaving the house before 6:00 in the morning
and driving to prison and spending the day bearing witness
to pretty significant trauma
is really very draining.
Whenever you're fighting human rights abuses in prison,
you never know what to expect.
[birds chirping]
- The first thing I remember seeing,
the girls yelling in the cells
and it just looked like top and bottom tier
of caged animals.
Everything was exposed.
You have male officers who can actually look in the cell
and see women sitting on the toilet, changing their pads.
[inmates chattering]
[soft intriguing music]
A few years later,
I began to experience like abdominal pain.
I was told I had a abnormal pap smear
and needed a cone biopsy to look for cancer.
The doctor said that it seems like I had cysts
that was growing on my ovaries.
He asked me how old I was.
I was about 24.
He said, "Do you want any children?"
I said, "Yes, I have two sons already.
And because I'm not gonna have a chance to raise them,
I'm looking forward to meeting someone who actually loves me
and raising more children."
So he said, "If I find cancer,
do you want us to do a hysterectomy?"
And I say, "Yes, if you find cancer."
So me and four other girls were called out to get chained up
in order to go out for surgery.
Everything's assembly line.
We're all handed a piece of paper by two nurses.
They're standing there like,
"You guys need to hurry up and sign."
We're trying to read as much as we can to understand.
But for the most part, we're looking.
They said, "This is for you to consent to the surgery
that you're having today."
[soft intriguing music]
[beeping medical monitor]
When I came out, I felt like something was wrong.
He told me, "Everything is fine.
We took out some cysts."
So then I asked him,
"Will I still be able to have children?"
He was like, "Yeah, I don't see why not."
[phone ringing]
- Can you tell me where you're calling from?
[phone ringing]
Do you mind if I get your name
just in case we're disconnected?
- Are you starting to actually get more hope though
around your own case?
We were getting hundreds of letters
about horrible medical abuses every month.
But then one day, we got this letter from Kelli Dillon
and it was really troubling.
[soft intriguing music]
- [Kelli] It's almost nine months passed
and I haven't had my period.
I got bad panic attacks, heart palpitation, night sweats
and I'm damn near 100 pounds smaller.
[soft intriguing music] [water pattering]
- She was suffering all these symptoms
that were classic symptoms of a surgical menopause,
but she was a young woman in her 20s.
- Cynthia advised me,
"You need to get your medical records."
After six months of fighting to just get my medical records,
Cynthia sat with me in the visiting room
and she read them to me.
"It says that you had abnormal cervical cells."
I asked her, "Did it ever say I have cancer?"
She said, "No, you never had cancer."
I had been intentionally sterilized and I had been lied to.
[soft intriguing music]
- My 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.
When 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.
- I'm HIV and Hep-C co-infected.
I'm self-disclosed.
I had heard some bits and pieces about Cynthia.
She was a young white woman,
a Harvard grad and Cynthia came up to me.
I can't like even imagine what she's got to tell me.
- We're failing to provide the most basic care
to the sickest and most vulnerable of the women
who are in this prison system.
- She's an attorney for compassionate release.
And I was like compassionate release?
Like who does that?
Like who fights for somebody that's going to die
and you fight to get them home?
- Many of us watched Rosemary Willeby die
because the Department of Corrections
refused to acknowledge that she was dying.
Certainly her worst nightmare came true.
She died absolutely alone
surrounded by not a single person who she loved.
- [Theresa] She 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.
It shouldn't be up to an inmate
to have to sit and figure out
what my T-cell count is and what it means to me.
- I watched two women die on my yard
that I was very close to and that I knew.
If I could see that the whites in their eyes
was yellow as a caution sign, why couldn't somebody else?
- [Cynthia] Healthcare is so bleak.
It's hard to imagine it's even by accident.
- [Reporter] Last year,
there were about 150 formal complaints
filed by inmates every month
from allegations of incompetence
to actual charges of sexual harassment.
- We have healthcare staff
who you go in for a cut on the finger
likes to give you a pap smear.
- For a chest cold, "Lemme do a pap smear."
- I've heard inmates tell me
that they would deliberately like to be examined.
The only male contact they get.
- You're telling me they're coming in here
in effect asking for them as some sort of titillation?
- It could very be, could very well be.
[soft intriguing music]
- California's women's prisons
have always had a horrific track record of medical care.
- This Friday, Judge Thelton Henderson delivered a ruling
that charged deplorable conditions
in state prisoner medical care.
- They had doctors and what looked like broom closets
seeing prisoners.
And I went and saw them standing in line,
the ceiling was dripping water
and they were standing in half-inch of water
waiting to be seen.
- [Cynthia] The federal courts
took over the whole healthcare system
for California's prisons
and placed it under federal receivership
to bring the healthcare up to constitutional standards.
- You know, people would say,
"Well how dare you know, a receiver
or somebody come into our house
and tell us how to do things."
CDC is punishment
and there was a lot of pushback
on adding rehabilitation to just CDC and making it CDCR.
They really saw the receivership is a threat.
I worked at the Central California Women's Facility
for about 17 years.
[wind chimes chiming]
People that do things for image
or that try to ensure that they get their care,
they're called inmate lovers.
You're an inmate lover.
[water trickling]
I have some fear.
What kind of repercussions will I get
for coming home and talking about this?
I took an oath when I graduated from nursing school
and it's that you do no harm.
But inmates become numbers.
You don't get names
and that's what makes it easy to abuse them.
[soft foreboding music] [birds chirping]
[inmates chattering]
- I 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.
And I said, "I know it's not my business
but what kinda surgery did you have?"
She said, "I had to get a partial hysterectomy."
I said, "For what?"
She said, "Oh, they said I had abnormal cells."
And then that's when the light bulb went off.
Why's it all of a sudden
we got all of these reproductive problems?
That's when I was like, "Aw nah, this don't sound right."
I made a phone call back to Cynthia.
I think that they been doing this to other women.
I started carrying a briefcase with forms
so I could help people contact Justice Now.
[soft intriguing music]
[door banging]
- Thanks to Kelli's organizing
we were able to uncover a dozen instances
of people being sterilized during other kinds of surgeries.
[soft solemn music]
- [Inmate] I put in a request to see the doctor
because I've had bad cramps.
And he said, "You have fibroid tumors
and severe endometriosis,
so that causes a higher risk of cervical cancer."
And he talked me into a hysterectomy.
[soft solemn music]
Four years later, I went to an OB-GYN doctor.
I asked him, "Did I have tumors and endometriosis?"
And he said, "I don't see any of that on here."
"He gave me hysterectomy for severe cramps?"
- [Inmate] He did a pelvic exam.
- [Inmate] He gave me some kinda test
and said I had some fibroid.
- [Inmate] I was told that I had cancer cells.
- [Inmate] They told me that I had to have
my ovaries removed.
I had no choice.
- [Inmate] We actually used to call 'em
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.
- It'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.
In Kelli'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.
- Although the fight was in me,
I was very much intimidated by whom I was goin' up against.
- [Attorney] I saw that you had a number of health issues
after surgery.
- I 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.
- [Attorney] What did you weigh when you into prison?
- Like 235 pounds.
- [Attorney] What was the least that you weighed?
- 118 pounds.
The doctor thought maybe I was a hypochondriac.
And he said, "that, um-
that I should be happy that I had lost weight.
So many women would love to have lost
the amount of weight that I've lost.
One doctor told me, "Well how do you expect
someone to treat you
if you are,
suing them?"
- [Attorney] I'm gonna bounce around that.
Other than the offense that you're currently in on,
did you have any other convictions?
- No. - The circumstances
that led to your current incarceration, tell me about that.
You need to take a break?
- They would have her recount
everything about her commitment offense
because they're looking for evidence
of her being someone who lies,
of her being someone who is lacking of character.
- [Attorney] How many times
did you receive medical treatment
for injuries you suffered as a result of domestic violence?
- Numerous. I can't,
I don't know.
I don't have a specific number.
- [Attorney] Can you gimme an estimate?
Five, 10, 20?
- You know, my heart had already been broken.
My spirit had already been crushed.
I didn't have nothin' to lose.
[soft solemn music]
My attorneys postponed the trial until I actually paroled.
I felt like I was going to get a real chance.
I don't know, I just thought that
like maybe this was the beginning of the tables turning.
- [Cynthia] The 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.
- [Attorney] You knew that your ovaries produce the eggs
and an egg was required to have a baby.
- Yes.
- [Attorney] In your complaint,
it's alleged that if you'd had known
there was a possibility that your ovaries
might have been removed during the surgery
you would not have consented to it.
- Yes. - Was the plan
that if he found cancer at surgery,
that he was going to add that same surgery
to a partial hysterectomy?
- That was my understanding.
- She consented to removing everything
if and only if she had cancer
and it had spread and was invasive.
She didn't have cancer.
- [Attorney] At any point
while you were at Madera Community Hospital,
did anybody tell you that all of your ovaries
had been removed?
- No.
- [Attorney] When's the first time a doctor
told you that you may be missing your ovaries?
- No one ever told me that.
- [Attorney] No medical doctors ever said that to you.
- No.
The jury was predominantly white from Fresno County.
I'm looking at this jury
hoping that they would say, "This is wrong.
No matter what or why she was there,
she didn't deserve this to happen to her.
- After a seven-day trial,
the jury believed the doctors' versions of events
that Kelli knew something was wrong
at the end of the surgery,
that she then missed the time she had to bring a claim
under the statute of limitations
and they use that to just dismiss all of her claims.
- I watch my lead attorney as well as her team
walk out the room and tears begin to roll down their eyes.
And I just looked at them and I said,
"Thank you for fighting for me
even if it was just for the fight."
[soft solemn music]
- Question 43,
If you found for a 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?
Zero dollars.
- I was looking at these documents
that was confirming that as a Black woman
my life wasn't shit.
It didn't mean anything.
It had no purpose.
[soft intriguing music]
I really couldn't enjoy my coming home.
My mind was in a trial
for the first three months of my freedom.
This photo album I kept with me in prison.
This is my favorite picture,
Anthony comin' to visit me in prison.
Outta the 15 years I was there, we had about five visits.
When I left, my sons was two and four.
So I'm watching my children grow up
on the other side of a glass.
It was hard.
When I came home, they were 16 and 18 years old.
I begin to hear from my children,
"You didn't have to go to prison.
You chose to."
I said, "Did they ever tell you how much I loved you?
Did they ever tell you of what I did
in order to make sure that a hand was never laid on you?"
I posted this up on my Facebook
and it said, "This is what domestic violence looks like."
Looking at this picture,
you can never see that I was a victim of domestic violence
'cause it looks like we madly in love, you know?
[soft solemn music]
[birds chirping]
- [Kids] Come on.
- [Cynthia] Okay.
Here, I'll get the door for you.
[hen clucking]
- Oh. - Oh.
- Gross.
- [Sophia] That was a rotten egg too.
- Okay then. - I don't know
if I wanna pick up the next one.
- This one's okay.
[birds chirping]
- My mom- - My mom is eccentric.
- My mom is
weird, yeah.
Professionally, she's a person who gets people outta prison.
And for fun, she's just like bleh and spazzes out.
- She talks to people
and then she writes stuff on the computer
and then she makes sure people does stuff.
- She has meetings a lot.
- Yeah.
- [Lilah] And she goes to a prison in the desert a lot.
- [Sophia] And then she'd cry.
- She cries a lot.
- For a long time. - Yeah.
- Activism's very labor-intensive and annoying
and I would not do it.
It's important but boring.
- Yeah. - I'd rather do genetics.
- Ditto.
- You don't even know what genetics are.
- I know, right? [chuckles]
[soft solemn music]
- I grew up in a really controlled household.
My house was our museum-perfect, photo-ready at all times.
I'm doing things that were just in the face
of what social norms and standards were.
It was very key to my teenage years
of rebelling against my household.
I was the only girl in my entire school with a Mohawk.
There were kids in my school who were like,
"Why do you look so weird?" [chuckles]
"Why do you do this?"
I found a sense of community and comradery
with teens that were living and working on the streets.
We used to hang out by the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia
and snarl and make faces.
We'll have our punk regalia on
and charge like five bucks a picture from tourists.
So 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.
You 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 healthcare,
the horrors of racism.
All of this stuff all intertwined.
I could be with those kids in the same street corner
and my life was gonna turn out differently
because of my class privilege and racial privilege.
And so I felt like it behooved me
to do something to change that.
We were all really optimistic about Kelli's case.
It seemed like one of those rare instances
where we really could see justice happen.
When she lost, it was just devastating.
And then suddenly, a whistleblower sent us the minutes
of a recent committee meeting
of the California Department of Corrections.
I was trying to figure out what to search for
and I thought for sure it would be hidden.
And then I saw the header:
"Birth Control and Sterilization".
Right there.
[soft intriguing music]
Their research showed it would be very cost-effective
to sterilize women during labor and delivery.
- They 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.
- Federal and state laws prohibit
sterilizing people in prison
for the purpose of birth control,
but they were doing it anyway.
So we sent a list of questions to the Federal Receivership.
The whole job of that office is to make sure
the laws are followed in healthcare delivery in the prisons.
One of the questions was had
they in fact started sterilizing women
during labor and delivery?
And the response was that yes, they were doing that
at two women's prisons.
This was signed by the Federal Receiver himself.
And could he be so clueless that he wouldn't even know
that he had just like stuck his foot in his mouth?
[soft intriguing music]
Any hearing that came up
that even touched on women's prisons I would go.
So 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.
And then I would present people the minutes
and I would say, "Hey, this state has recommended this.
This is outrageous.
This is illegal under federal law."
They see that as a cost-effective moment,
an opportune moment in which to sterilize people.
- We're assured that, "No, no.
That was just something that
people talked about in that meeting,
but they actually weren't gonna do,"
or, "It was just on the side.
It wasn't a big deal.
They're not actually doing that.
Just don't worry your pretty little heads."
- We were met with comments like,
"Well those women wouldn't really wanna have more children
anyway, would they?"
- I was in between projects,
so I was you know, kinda prospecting
and CNN was playing in the background.
- Tonight, a report on a really disturbing chapter
in our history.
One that's a lot more recent than you might think.
So we're talking about eugenics,
a word which obviously it typically associated
with Nazi Germany.
But there was a large eugenics movement in America
before and after World War II.
- [Reporter] The goal?
To rid the country of the feeble-minded.
- Disability, race and gender were the criteria.
By the 1930s, 30 states had passed laws
allowing for coercive sterilization.
- [Reporter] But California was in a league of its own.
The Golden State sterilized 20,000 people.
- That blew my mind.
More people were sterilized in California
than any other state in the country.
[soft intriguing music]
The Germans actually came over to California
to study California's program and then use the lessons
to create their eugenics program in Nazi Germany.
- [Dorothy] After World War II,
eugenics goes sort of underground.
- [Announcer] The distribution of people is far off balance.
High birth rates go hand in hand with low incomes.
- It became more a policy of population control
through birth control policy, welfare policy.
And now it was targeted mostly at women of color.
♪ Got enough children
♪ What do we do
♪ Got enough children
♪ What do we do
- [Dorothy] There are government-sponsored campaigns
to sterilize Indigenous women, women of Puerto Rico,
Mexican-origin women in California,
as well as Black women in the United States.
- [Reporter] You're saying sterilize the woman
if she's had more than two illegitimate children.
- Right.
- [Reporter] If she's on welfare.
- Absolutely.
- Last week, a Black Alabama couple
filed a $1 million damage suit against the government
charging that their two daughters had been sterilized
without their informed consent.
- I put a X on a piece of paper,
then she told me that they were gon' give us some shots.
That's what she told me. - I see.
- [Reporter] Why were they giving you the shots
in the first place?
- [Interviewee] Keepin' us from having children.
They said they didn't want us to have no children.
- [Reporter] Did it hurt you?
[soft solemn music]
- Doctors around the country performed hysterectomies
on young Black women just to practice hysterectomies.
- [Anderson] Tens of thousands of Americans were operated on
against their will or without their consent.
- [Reporter] The government today announced strict new rules
to protect people who are sterilized.
- [Reporter] Guidelines to require written informed consent.
- Federal judge. - To affect more than 100,000
persons a year. - Minors under age 21,
welfare mothers, others.
- The ideas sparked in my head that I would spend some time
looking at historical eugenics in California.
I started to Google and I saw an article
that Cynthia Chandler had written.
And so I immediately called her up
and I was like, "Is it true
that there are people in the prisons getting sterilized?"
And she said, "Of course, it's true."
- We've heard from a lotta people
about the surgeries that are happening on the inside.
What a hysterectomy is? It's the removal of your uterus.
They typically would take the fallopian tubes as well
and possibly the ovaries.
When the ovaries are removed
and there's that big drop in estrogen,
people can have a lotta different symptoms:
having a lot of hot flashes,
big mood changes and your period stops.
And then another thing that we were hearing from people
was tubal ligation.
The surgeon will cut the fallopian tubes.
We've heard from individuals who were asked to sign forms
when they were being put under anesthesia.
If the doctor is asking repeatedly and you don't say yes,
they might just go ahead and do it anyway.
Especially if you're having a C-section, right?
Because your reproductive organs, all of this good stuff
is already out on the table basically, literally.
It would not be difficult, you know?
Cut and cauterize your tubes if they wanted to
and you don't know that.
You can't have more children in the future.
[soft solemn music]
- I was given a six month sentence and I was pregnant,
so I asked the judge if I could either
be sent to a mother/infant program
instead of going to prison,
that way I could avoid giving birth in prison
and being separated from my newborn baby.
And she didn't wanna do that.
They made me have a C-section.
And I kept asking them, "Why do I have to have a C-section?"
They said, "Because of security purposes."
"You're gonna do major surgery on me
and cut open my body for security purposes?"
I get to the Madera County Hospital.
I'm handcuffed to the bed, cut open under anesthesia.
Had a epidural.
I'm just majorly drugged up
to where I don't even know
probably what day of the week it is.
The doctor had me sign a form.
He said, "Are we doin' tubal ligation here?"
That's something you're supposed to sit down
and discuss in the office prior to the surgery.
That's not something you just throw on me
as you're cutting me open.
And I declined and I couldn't even sign, so I just put an X.
And I have no idea what I X'd.
- We started putting in a series
of public record act requests
to get the numbers and the data on
how many people were sterilized.
- So this is all the data.
This is vaginal deliveries and C-sections in here.
- [Cynthia] 222 C-sections.
393 births.
That's a really remarkably high rate of C-section.
- [Robin] Yeah.
- [Cynthia] It's a little fishy to imagine
that multiple people would be giving birth on the same day,
also having C-sections
and also choosing to have tubal ligations.
- [Robin] So you can see there's ligate oviducts add-on.
And that kinda kills me, the add-on part.
It wasn't necessary for the surgery,
but we thought we'd just take away
your reproductive capacity.
[soft intriguing music]
- Justice Now had gotten a partial list
of tubal ligation surgeries
that have been reimbursed to the doctor.
So the state were paying the doctors
for having performed these surgeries.
As an investigative reporter,
I've seen spreadsheets that have fields removed.
I was like, "There's more to this data
than what you guys have."
There is a culture of secrecy in California.
They don't call it secrecy. They call it privacy.
Not only do you have women in prison,
you have laws around protecting their confidentiality.
But then you have medical privacy.
There's just layers and layers of
plausible reasons why somebody can say no.
So I was getting doors slammed
and stonewalled left and right.
Then it became a question of
how do I put a human face on this data?
Justice Now had access on the inside that I didn't have.
And so I was very anxious.
You know, hook me up here.
Gimme access to somebody who can help me.
- In 2006, I was sentenced to Valley State Prison for women.
I was 21 years old and I was pregnant at the time.
- Someone asked me to work down at the prison
in my OB department.
And I'm like "OB department?
You have an OB department in the prison?
"Yeah.
You know, women come in pregnant."
And I'm like "Oh.
Okay." [chuckles]
That's a new thought.
"See, when you go way over on this side,
there's just not much fluid.
You've had this happen to you before.
- Yeah.
- [Crystal] I was there being seen by Dr. Heinrich.
He was eating while I was you know, laid up on the bed
waiting to be examined.
- And he would be doing a vaginal exam
and would be smackin' his lips
and that just grossed the patients out.
- And I'm like, "Is this the best time
to be eating that sandwich while you're doing a pap smear?"
- [Corey] He'd be working without gloves on
or eating popcorn.
It was just filthy.
He had a history of lawsuits that resulted in settlements
where the allegations were really serious.
We're talking basic-level mistakes
that resulted in permanently deformed children
or permanently deformed women.
[soft intriguing music]
- [Crystal] I ended up working at the infirmary.
I would have to give the inmates urine cups
and write their name on it.
While I was working the infirmary,
Dr. Heinrich made a comment
that some people shouldn't have kids
because they keep coming back and forth to prison.
He sees women that come back and forth to prison
all the time and they keep coming back pregnant.
- Heinrich will look at their file.
He would figure out if this was their first time
or if this was a repeat time
and then he would make a judgment call to pitch the woman
on getting their tubes tied.
- He would become somewhat pushy about it and insistent.
- I talked 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
because it was my first time in prison.
- One of the challenges with this story
and the question of eugenics,
you ultimately have to get to intent.
You have inmates making allegations
against people who have PhDs, right?
And so the question then becomes
how do you know that the crook is telling the truth?
So I'm calling Dr. Heinrich and I get a woman.
She says, "He's not gonna talk."
She slammed the phone down, but I'm getting desperate
and I decide to just get in my car and drive to his house.
And I just knock on the door.
I'm drenched in sweat.
And he came to the door
and I said, "Hi Dr. Heinrich, my name's Corey Johnson.
I'm with Center for Investigative Reporting.
Can I have some water?"
And he stopped and he said, "Okay, come on in."
And as I get the water,
I pull out my laptop and I show him a spreadsheet of costs.
And I say to him point blank,
"The rules say that sterilization procedures were banned.
And according to this spreadsheet,
there's well over $100,000 that has been paid
of taxpayer money on a procedure that's banned."
And then that's when he said,
"Well that's cheaper than welfare."
[soft dramatic music]
- [Reporter] A bombshell report
from the Center of Investigative Reporting
shows that doctors- - Female inmates in California
were illegally sterilized.
- [Reporter] Doctors pressured them into tubal ligations.
- While they were on an operating table heavily sedated.
- That's absolutely not the appropriate time
to be attempting to get consent
for major life-changing surgery.
- [Reporter] Prison officials claim
it helps save the state money.
- It's like a drop in the bucket
compared to quote,
- And these are by the way mostly repeat offenders
who were sterilized.
- Where are they getting pregnant in prison?
Like that's the first question you have to address?
- Absolutely. - Disgusting, eww.
- When the story came out,
within hours there were at least 700 comments.
Within a day, there was over 2,000.
- [Reporter] Why does the state need to give its consent
if the women already are?
- [Reporter] We give our criminals way too many rights
when they go to prison.
- [Reporter] People will get up in arms
and say, "This is like eugenics."
- [Reporter] If they can stay out of jail
and raise their kids without our assistance, why reproduce?
- [Reporter] Can you explain
why you consider these coercive?
- [Reporter] Since when do prisoners' rights
trump the rights-
- [Reporter] The State of California.
- [Reporter] Unless you can step forward and show
that you have the financial wherewithal
to take care of the child, I'm gonna predict that you-
- [Corey] It got real ugly.
There were days where I just would not look at the comments
because I didn't wanna be messed up in the head all day.
[soft intriguing music] [reporters chattering]
- [Adam] 'Kay. If everybody would take a seat,
we're gonna get started.
- The 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.
- Joyce Hayhoe representing California
Correctional Healthcare Services.
First of all, we support the sonnet request.
We believe- - Well I certainly as chair
appreciate that you're here to support the audit.
I think the more important question is why you didn't know.
The Receiver was put in place specifically
to come in and protect the constitutional rights of inmates.
- Mr. Kelso was not aware
until it was brought to my attention.
- Receiver himself was not aware
of what was happening under his watch.
That's your testimony today. - Yes.
Yes. - Okay.
- I do believe that the receiver's office itself
was in fact aware of that before then.
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.
- Medical doctors thought that it was okay
to sterilize women without their permission?
- No.
Medical doctors thought it was okay to sterilize women
having been given informed consent.
And so most of-
- [Adam] Isn't that the same as without their permission?
I'm confused on-
- Women were signing consent forms.
- I'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.
But this is unbelievable.
- That one should not be asked in that environment
to give up a fundamental right to bear children.
I've had displeasure of a dozen times
going through people's medical records
and learning that they were sterilized
during unrelated medical procedures and they didn't know it.
The State has admitted
that they have done these illegal surgeries,
but we don't actually know who they did them on.
- I'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.
[soft intriguing music]
'Kay, I would remind members of the committee,
please come to the committee so we establish rapport.
- It was incredibly affirming to hear the legislature
call these abuses outrageous.
We've been working for years
to get the government to take this seriously.
Finally, the same legislators are standing up
and doing what needs to be done.
The Department of Corrections and the receivers claim
usually there was very little personal knowledge
on the part of present administrators of this happening.
- It's my understanding that many of these
did have some kinda consent at the outside doctor
because these procedures are performed
in a community facility, just so that that's clear.
They're not performed at the institution.
Doctors statewide felt for whatever reason
that it was being sanctioned by the department.
- There may be doctors who aren't aware of the policy
or the federal law issue.
I can well imagine an outside physician in good faith
thinking that this is a matter of reproductive autonomy
and not knowing the conversation that has been going on
about the inability to give valid consent in prison.
- For inmates to sign consent is a really big deal
because they're seen as a ward of the court
and not really being allowed to enter into contracts.
You would think there would've been a red flag
when the billing departments received those bills.
- When I arrived at the receivership in 2008,
we did not use standard medical billing codes.
And so there really was no easy way for us
to know what we were paying for.
- That seems very unbelievable to me.
To 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.
[soft intriguing music] [pen scratching]
So I would suspect that many high up officials
were in fact aware of what was going on
and potentially part of it.
- Everything had to go through committee
and everything had to be documented
as to why this was necessary.
[soft intriguing music]
- At the point that Dr. Heinrich was hired,
sterilization procedures have been going on for years
at multiple prisons.
He strongly believed that there were women
that were gaming the system and that needed to be stopped.
- He was communism and costs
and he tried to save the state and the prison system money.
- That attitude tracked precisely
to the historical attitude of the California leaders
of the eugenics movement.
They had always used cost benefit as the justifier
for why they were doing what they were doing.
And so in that way, Heinrich was part of a legacy.
If you just stop and make him the face of it,
do you really get at the problem?
[soft serene music] [birds chirping]
- [Player] Oh!
That's two.
- Thank you, sweetheart.
- Have a good day. - Have a good day.
You too.
[lively ice cream truck music] [birds chirping]
This is my space for right now.
Of course I desire to have my own home.
But my mom's older and you know,
I feel good about bein' able to be here with her.
I wasn't able to be here with my dad.
I lost my dad when I was in prison.
So for God to gimme opportunity
to be with my mom in her latter years
though we fight like cats and dogs.
But at the same time, she tough too.
So she's one of my best opponents.
My relationship with my oldest son is very strained.
He remembers some of the episodes of domestic violence.
I 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.
[Skype ringtone music]
How you doin'?
- [Kelli] What's up with it?
- You all right?
But my youngest son doesn't remember the violence
and the interaction with me as a mother.
Listen, I supposed to come down there.
I'm tryin' to get Anthony to come with me.
And I think that at times that he look at the fact
that me and you, we get along a little bit better
because you just let shit.
If it happened, it happened.
Bygones is bygones, okay?
We passed that.
- [Kelli] Right.
Thank God for this technology of FaceTime.
All right then, baby. I love you.
But to me, the FaceTime is a glass window
like when I was incarcerated.
Instead of me havin' all these scars
from the things that happened to me,
I want like things that symbolize my victories.
And so to me, like this with the three butterflies
that represent me and my two sons.
And soon as I got this tattoo,
I just start feelin' liberated, you know.
It's me taking the power back on my body
and putting things there that represent who I am
as opposed to what I've been through.
[birds chirping]
- Morning everybody.
Good morning.
All right.
- We made a plan to speak to different legislators
that we thought would be strategic.
And Senator Jackson was at the top of my list.
- Boy, this thing moves slowly. Doesn't it?
- She showed up to the hearing
when she isn't on that committee.
That doesn't happen. [chuckles]
Legislators that are on committees
don't show up to their hearings.
Legislators that are on committees
are twiddling their thumbs and falling asleep.
- Great. Thanks.
Okay, bye-bye.
When I first learned of what was going on,
I was absolutely horrified.
The fact that these women were being treated like objects
and as non-human beings, how could this be happening?
We had outlawed sterilization since 1979
and many of us assumed that it had ended at that time.
A blight on our state history but nonetheless had stopped.
So this bill was to make it very, very clear
that doctors cannot perform these procedures in prison.
Period.
- I did not know that actually.
- If I had known that that was illegal,
I would not have obtained the consent for it.
[employees chattering]
[phone ringing]
- I'm typing up a survey
breaking down each different component of the bill
and asking people on the inside if they agree or disagree
and then there's room for people to write more
about what it is that they feel.
"Keep up the great work,"
or, "This is why I disagree with a particular part."
They just have room to explain that if they want to.
- [Automated Voice] Call from an inmate at
the Central California Women's Facility.
- [Inmate] Hey, how are you?
- Hello. - Good, how are you doin'?
- [Courtney] Justice Now is the only organization
that we know of that has people
who are currently imprisoned on the board.
- Do you feel like folks are feeling good about the bill
or they're having some significant concerns?
- [Cynthia] And how has that been going?
- Yeah.
- We're going to be bringing to the legislature
actual words and experiences from people inside.
And so that information that you're gathering is so crucial.
- Yeah. Thank you so much.
[gentle music]
- [Inmate] I was naive. I really didn't know what to do.
I just went along with their doctor
'cause I figured he knew best.
- [Inmate] I didn't know that I won't have children.
- [Inmate] I've been told, "Well you're pre-menopausal.
You're past breeding age," like I was a cow.
- [Inmate] I would've loved to have a child.
- [Inmate] I've seen it happenin' more so
with Hispanic, African American.
You don't hear too much of it happenin'
in the Caucasian descent at all.
- [Inmate] We're women in prison.
Who cares if they mess up our reproductive system?
We're prisoners.
We shouldn't be able to reproduce anyway.
- There's certain things that I picked up in prison
that I believe were positive habits.
This is a habit that I got out of prison
is after we use the sink, we spray it down.
Wish there's more people do that.
But you know, when you in prison,
you develop this germaphobe.
You got eight girls using the same sink.
I got one week left for school.
It has been the toughest month
and I'm only at undergrad.
Just imagine how it's gon' be me
trying to go after my masters.
- I think-
- I'm hoping, is it?
Can I hope?
- You certainly can. - Okay.
[group laughing]
I'm hoping to be completed at least
a semester coming out of incarceration.
I have less than a year left.
- Oh wait-
Social studies.
- I really would like to work with battered women
and troubled young teen girls.
[smooth rhythmic music]
- Welcome back to The Dialogue.
We are talking about the effects of trauma, abuse
and domestic violence on the Black community.
We're starting with Ms. Kelli Dillon.
She is a survivor of domestic violence
and an advocate for prevention and intervention.
- Most of the people see victims as very fragile, docile.
- Helpless. - Helpless.
- White.
- We are seen as aggressive.
- When a police officer approaches a female
African American or Latina,
they automatically ask them, "Are you gang affiliated?"
92% of all the women that are in prison
are in prison because of domestic violence.
- I have already been sexually assaulted.
I had already been held hostage in the house for three days.
When I call, the police may say,
"You don't look like a victim."
So I had lost hope in the people
that were supposed to be there to protect and serve me.
At that point, I had had it.
Either I was gonna get out by foot or in a body bag.
I just wanted out.
- We've gotten over 400 responses on this survey so far
and there are more coming in every day.
And that's pretty significant when you consider that
there are approximately 3,000 people inside CCWF.
[soft intriguing music]
"I did not know that I had another choice.
I was not given follow-up care."
It's you know, just a line of agree, agree, agree, agree.
People came out of the woodwork through that survey.
It goes deeper than even we who've been working on this
for a decade now.
- [Chair] If you could go ahead and present SP-1135 please.
- My name is Kelly Densmore
and I am reading a statement from somebody inside.
"At Valley State Prison for Women,
my gynecologist tried to get me to have a hysterectomy."
- [Inmate] You take a big risk by speaking out
on the leases that happen to you behind bars.
- "In prison, you worry about
filing a complaint against a doctor
because the threat of retaliation is always there."
- [Inmate] But I can't say as a woman and not speak out.
- "The United Nations convention on human rights
talks about the right to family."
- [Inmate] I understand that we're where we're at,
but I'm still a human being.
- "We are not animals." - They don't care about us.
- [Inmate] There's no accountability here.
[inmates chattering]
- [Inmate] This is not okay.
- "Please pass this bill as a step in the right direction
towards universal human rights,
not just human rights for people outside of prison."
- I was the attorney who actually reviewed
Kelli Dillon's medical records
and had the displeasure of having to communicate to her
that she had been sterilized
without her knowledge or consent.
She was one of 10 women in the California prison system
that I've had that same conversation with,
all of whom were women of color,
who were darker skinned women of color
and/or transgender people.
I'm incredibly heartfelt
that this is now being taken seriously
and I strongly support this bill.
Thank you.
- Are there speakers in opposition to the bill?
- We represent 5,500 obstetricians and gynecologists
here in California.
We oppose the bill
because by completely banning sterilization,
we're taking away a woman's right to consent to a procedure.
I've had patients with complex heart conditions.
If they were undergoing a ceasarean section,
I would recommend for tubal sterilization,
given the risks of any subsequent pregnancy to their health.
For every sterilization procedure
in which I have personally participated in,
the patient is asked to not once, not twice
but dozens of times by multiple providers
whether or not she would like to proceed
with the sterilization.
- [Cynthia] We were shocked that our opposition
came from the American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Very few of their members,
let alone their leadership work in prisons.
- The priority of ACOG
is the health and wellbeing of our patients
and we're hopeful that we can find a process
through which these women will have access to sterilization.
- Their testimony
created a tremendous obstacle for this bill.
They want people to make reproductive choices,
but we don't know what goes on in prison.
The prison is a black hole.
- Inside a prison setting
to ask somebody to make a decision like that
is not a really good ideal.
People have total control over you.
If you don't follow the rules
or anybody simply says that you didn't follow the rule,
you may have time added to the time you're already serving.
- We needed to make our case that indeed these procedures
were being done without consent.
- [Cynthia] You know, we've been having a really hard time
identifying who the people were
who were sterilized while they were giving birth, right?
As opposed to folks like you
who were sterilized during other operations.
And that's one of the reasons
why it would be so key to feature you.
I think it's really our best hope
of stopping the sterilizations
and we could practice what your testimony's gonna be.
- Do I have to go in front of like a jury
or somethin' like that?
Like what do you mean testify?
- [Cynthia] When a legislator creates a bill,
it has to travel in front of a bunch of committees
before it goes before the whole Senate to vote and then-
- I have a obligation to back Cynthia.
Because if it was not for her, I would not have found out
everything that had happened to me.
But I couldn't go through like another interview, testimony,
hearing or anything because once I'm done,
you know, I leave and I go home and everybody go home.
But I'm left now with having regurgitated
all of those emotions and feelings.
Now they're here, they're here and here
and then no one's there to help me process it.
Yes, I have the power to change lives
with the awareness would happen to me,
but it's still my story and I still own it.
I still have the say so of who I wanna tell it to
and why I wanna tell it.
It belongs to me.
[clock ticking]
- The bill isn't moving forward
and it's just exhausting everyone.
It's not just me.
It's the whole organization.
And I think on an organizational leadership perspective,
it's like how long can I continue not just to push myself?
But how long can I continue to push everyone else?
What ranking are you on that game now?
- Aren't you like 30?
- [Lilah] 29.
- [Cynthia] 29. Now how may people playing that online game?
- I can check what place mine is now
'cause it won't change. - Hundreds of thousands.
- [Cynthia] Hundreds of thousands?
- At least.
- My kids were telling their friends,
"Oh yeah, that's my mom.
The champion for everybody else.
Your always promoting leadership with people inside
when my friends and I are dealing with all this crap
at school and you're not helping us."
And I was like, "Oh my gosh, you're right."
I spend all my resources and basically all my capacities
in building up other people
that I was neglecting my children.
If this goes nowhere
and I've lost all that time with my kids, I-
Yeah, that would just be a shame.
- [Attorney] What was your thought process
as to whether or not you wanted to have more children
when you got out?
- I had a hope and a possibility that
I might find a man that would love me and treat me,
who would love me and that
I might be able to like have a family
or a chance to be a mother.
[group chattering]
- Hi.
Good to see you.
- How you been? - Good, how are you?
- Oh, I love your haircut. - Thank you.
Hi Tammy, nice to meet you.
We ready today?
All right. [exhales]
Hard to cram in. - I know.
- [Kelli] And that's why I was like something so tragic
in two, three minutes.
- [Misty] Right.
- Like how do I sum up?
I mean how do we sum up what happened
in two or three minutes, you know?
- Maybe you should start it out like that.
"How do I sum up what they did to me
in two or three minutes?"
- We're testifying
in front of the Assembly Health Committee.
And if it passes that committee,
then it will go to the assembly floor.
And if it passes that,
then it will be going to the governor's desk after that.
So we're keeping our fingers crossed
that he will see how important this is
and sign the bill into law.
- Now is more so about making it okay
to say, "Kelli, that did happen."
Acknowledging that it's a part of me.
- And then moving forward with that.
- And moving forward with it.
- Yeah.
- It was one thing to fight about what happened,
but then it's another thing to settle with the fact
that this is what happened and this is now who you are
for the rest of your life, period.
Every time I've dated, and I'm happy.
I'm ecstatic about the relationship.
I'm falling in love.
And then all of a sudden it comes crashing down
when they say, "I would love to have a kid with you."
And when they say that, then I really feel unworthy.
I feel unwhole.
You know, I feel ashamed.
And so there's a part of me
that's tired of feeling that way too.
[tense music]
- I have with me here today Kelli Dillon.
She is a domestic violence counselor,
a gang interventionist.
She has dedicated her life to ending violence
against women in her community
and also experienced sterilization abuse
while imprisoned here in California
and is here today to share her story.
- I am a survivor of non-consensual, unlawful sterilization
that was performed on me at the age of 24 in 2001
while I was a inmate in Central California Women's Facility.
I'm here to testify that what this bill represents is real
for the women that are incarcerated
and this thing has happened to.
I wanted a second chance at life
and I wanted a second chance at being a mother.
I trusted.
[Kelli sobbing] [gentle music]
I trusted the surgeon to respect and to acknowledge
that I still had a future and that I wanted one.
I feel like I've been robbed of the fullness
that could have been given to me
had this not happened to me.
Did this happen to me because I was African-American?
Did it happen to me because I was a woman?
Did it happen to me because I was an inmate?
Or did it happen to me because I was all three?
As I'm sitting here listening to myself,
I'm saying to myself like damn, this is a sad-ass story.
Where the fuck is my happy ending?
I deserve a fresh new start.
I'm ready to fall in love.
I'm ready to be loved.
I'm ready to have a home.
I'm ready to see the world.
I'm a good person
that a lot of fucked up shit has happened to.
I'm ready.
I am so, so ready.
I just want to finish up by saying
that this bill will help to protect other women
who have the opportunity to be rehabilitated
and to actually restore the quality of their life
and the gift that life has to offer
which is motherhood and having children.
As a survivor of non-consensual, unlawful sterilization,
I'm asking you to approve this bill.
- atherine Williams with the ACLU of California in support.
- Emma Hartung of Legal Services
for Prisoners with Children in strong support.
- Rebecca Gonzales, National Association of Social Workers
California chapter in support.
- They all said aye.
- Yes, so? [Kelli exhales]
[people chattering]
[group chattering]
We're a team.
This was an amazing team today.
[gentle music]
- [Reporter] Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill
bringing an end to forced prison sterilization.
- The bill passed with bipartisan support.
It's criminal behavior now to do this
and we've let the corrections system know they're on record.
- [Cynthia] They cannot sterilize people in prison
for the purpose of birth control ever again.
- This bill will set a standard
for the other prisons throughout United States.
Because this is not just happening here
in the state of California.
It's actually happening all over.
- I've thought from the very beginning
that this bill should've been called the
Kelli Dillon Anti-coercive Sterilization Bill, you know.
I think,
but for her inspiration and her courage early, early on,
Justice Now wouldn't have even been
investigating this stuff.
We would never would've found out about the abuses,
let alone would there have been a bill.
- This is just the beginning.
This is just the beginning.
[group chattering]
- Look at the fucking shoes!
[group laughing]
Look, everybody look at our founder's shoes!
- Aren't they fun? - They are really fun.
- When people say, "Oh, we can't change the prison system,"
yes, we can.
Because we are.
We are change. We are proof that it can happen.
[group cheering]
Our mission of Justice Now is to have formerly incarcerated
and women that are on the board
have the chance to come into Justice Now
and transition into bigger leadership roles
and run Justice Now.
♪ Make up your mind
♪ What you searching for
♪ Is it money
♪ Is it something like freedom
♪ Nothin' against myself
♪ But I can really see myself
♪ Come around, come around, come around ♪
♪ Now I'm holding it back
- I was just talking to my son, right?
And I was telling him about the graduation
because I never got a chance to do those things.
The first time I didn't get a chance to graduate
because of me being a teenage mom,
then I didn't get a chance to graduate
from medical assisting school
because of the domestic violence and abuse.
And me coming home from prison,
like this means everything to me.
[smooth rhythmic music]
- [Emcee] Kelli Dillon.
♪ Make up your mind
♪ What you searching for
♪ Stake your claim
♪ Is it fame
♪ Do you see your name in lights ♪
♪ Make up your mind
♪ What you searching for
♪ Is it money
♪ Is it somethin' like freedom
[birds chirping]
- [Cynthia] The bill is the culmination
of my work at Justice Now,
but there's still so much that needs to be done.
I'm frustrated this isn't a bigger national conversation.
We can't afford to forget.
[soft solemn music]
- The bill was so needed because
Department of Corrections had been spitting on
women's sterilization problem for years.
- But now that there's been a small victory,
they're blocking advocates
or anyone who's coming in from the outside
from being able to come in freely to interview inmates.
- [Cynthia] There are women today
that need reproductive care
but absolutely cannot get it because of the retaliation.
- [Inmate] The doctor told me,
"Thanks to your fellow inmates, I'm not doing nothing."
- [Corey] When they say that CDC is the belly of the beast,
it's literal.
[soft intriguing music]
[doors banging]
- We have yet to get an apology.
We have yet to be acknowledged.
We have to crack this thing wide open.
CDC has to be made accountable.
- So yes to me, that's a good thing.
As to whether I think it should be illegal?
[mysterious music]
Not necessarily.
Even if it's not medically necessary,
it could or would in the long run save state funds
like doctor has said.
So,
you know, was he wrong in that estimation?
Probably not.
Because
as I said the ideal time to do a tubal
is when you're already in there.
It just takes a couple more minutes and a couple more snips.
- Good morning, Mr. Chair and members.
I'm here to proudly present Assembly Bill 1764
which will provide redress to people
who were involuntarily sterilized
under California's previous eugenics laws
and female inmates in California state prisons
who were sterilized without proper authorization.
This bill provides material acknowledgement
of this injustice
by creating the Forced Sterilization Compensation Program.
[uplifting music]
♪ Ooh
- Like I always talked about where's the happy ending?
Like no, I'm unsatisfied.
There gotta be a happy ending.
I watch too much,
well I live in LA and Hollywood.
It has to be a fucking happy ending.
Like there has to be happy ending somewhere.
♪ What's going on
♪ When I gotta fight for a right that is rightfully mine ♪
♪ What's going on
♪ When the world can decide if a caged bird flies ♪
♪ Or ever get a chance to grow
♪ Too many people are invisible ♪
♪ It's a problem
♪ How can we ignore what's going on ♪
♪ I got questions I need answers ♪
♪ It's been too long
♪ Why
♪ I cry
♪ Oh why do these tears keep running dry ♪
♪ But I just keep fighting
♪ 'Cause it ain't over
♪ Till it's over
♪ It ain't over till it's done
♪ Till these shackles are broken ♪
♪ It ain't over
♪ 'Cause some wounds never heal ♪
♪ Do you see what you done
♪ See what you done
♪ 'Cause some wounds never heal ♪
♪ Do you see what you done
♪ See you what you done
♪ 'Cause some wounds never heal ♪
♪ Do you see what you done
♪ What's going on
♪ We got strength but no power
♪ All we ever wanted was what's ours ♪
♪ Then one day we wake up and everything has changed ♪
♪ Who can I blame
♪ Who's gonna carry the shame
♪ After all this pain I'll never be the same ♪
♪ Why
♪ I cry
♪ Oh why
♪ But while I still got time
♪ I'll just keep on fighting
♪ 'Cause it ain't over
♪ No, it ain't over
♪ Till it's over
♪ It ain't over till it's done
♪ Till these shackles are broken ♪
♪ It ain't over
♪ Ooh
♪ 'Cause some wounds never heal ♪
♪ Do you see what you done
♪ See what you done
♪ 'Cause some wounds never heal ♪
♪ Can you see what you done
♪ See what you done
♪ Oh
♪ 'Cause some wounds never heal ♪
♪ Do you see what you done
♪ Now we won't lay down
♪ We're survivors
♪ All my scars are my reminders ♪
♪ We won't lay down
♪ We're survivors
♪ All my scars are my reminders ♪
♪ 'Cause it ain't over
[soft soothing music]