In the wake of the horrifying stories coming out of ICE detention centers alleging that state and prison officials are performing mass hysterectomies on immigrant women, Erika Cohn’s documentary Belly of the Beast is more urgent than ever.

The film, which comes out on PBS’s Independent Lens on November 23, follows Kelli Dillon, a Black woman who underwent sterilization without her knowledge and consent while incarcerated in the Central California Women’s facility. Along with other prison abolition activists, including the deeply passionate lawyer Cynthia Chandler, Dillon fights to pass a bill that would officially ban forced sterilization and provide reparations for survivors and protection for whistleblowers.

Dillon’s story is a tough one: she was incarcerated for 15 years after murdering her abusive husband. While serving her sentence, Dillon, then 24, was told that she had to have a cyst removed. But only after the surgery, followed by menopausal symptoms, did she find out that doctors had got her to sign forms, while she was under heavy anesthesia, consenting to a hysterectomy. To this day, the prison staff, including the OB-GYN doctor James Heinrich who performed the surgery, have not been persecuted. Nor did any of them agree to be interviewed for the film.

Cohn’s film is extremely horrifying, but it is an absolute necessary watch, especially for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. As the film outlines, forced hysterectomies have a long history in America. Its modern-day incarnation can be directly linked ideologically to Jim Crow–era racial eugenics laws that targeted Black and Indigenous women.

“Did this happen to me because I was African American. Did this happen to me because I was a woman? Did this happen to me because I was an inmate? Or did this happen because I was all three?” Dillon rhetorically asks during one of her testimonies. In one of the most disturbing scenes, Cohn interviews a former prison nurse who essentially answers Dillon’s question. The director asks the nurse whether she thought forced hysterectomies should be illegal. The nurse says:

“Not necessarily. Even if it’s not medically necessary, it could or would in the long run save state funds. So was he [James Heinrich] wrong in my 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.”

By the end, it will be hard not to feel a great deal of anger. Belly of the Beast is an urgent wake-up call and yet another brutal reminder that we are not that far past the era of Jim Crow.