Spotlight on Minneapolis & New AMSA Repro Fellow
AMSA Reproductive Health Project eNews #63 – January 31, 2026
Greetings from the AMSA Reproductive Health Project!
If you reside in the northern hemisphere, congratulations to you for making it through January – no matter how you managed to survive it. But the bitter cold and record-breaking snowfall that many of us have experienced this month is just one way this January has been brutal. In just these first 31 days of 2026, no fewer than 8 people have died in connection to US federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This is the blood that federal agents, acting under the direction of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, have spilled so far in 2026 – a rate that, if it continues, would magnify the 32 documented deaths in ICE custody during 2025 by a factor of 4.
The most recent extrajudicial killings – public executions carried out by federal agents – of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, MN, have generated significant public outcry, protest, and political fallout. Their deaths at the hands of ICE agents are morally reprehensible, as is the death of Keith Porter Jr., a Black man and father of two, who was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent on the evening of December 31, 2025. Keith Porter’s death has not received nearly the level of attention that the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti – both white people – have gained. I am soberly mindful of what Langston Hughes wrote in 1936,
“Fascism is a new name for the terror the Negro has always faced in America.”
Indeed, incarceration and internment have long been the business of the United States, so this is not new. And, about 100 years ago, German Nazis did in fact travel to the US to study our systems, technologies, and tools of white terrorism against Black and Indigenous people – including the eugenics being practiced by white physicians in the US – and took what they learned back to Europe to perfect their own campaigns of terror and tyranny against Jews, Romani, queers, trade unionists, and disabled people.
Yes, it’s true, we live in a terrible, horrifying timeline. A timeline of division, state terrorism, international war-mongering, fascism, white supremacist nationalism, and mind-boggling corruption. But we are also living in other timelines, too. Ones that tether us to a future that, in fact, is not predetermined, and thus can be shaped by us by direct actions on the material conditions of the present moment.
These are timelines in which masses of people are coming together to manifest transformed conditions that allow people to flourish and thrive, in the fullness of their humanity, dignity, and agency.
These are timelines that actually stretch far back, too, because they are timelines filled with the collective and cumulative impact of all the humans who have ever contributed to the labor of improving the conditions of human life – our good ancestors and liberatory lineage.
Last week, a group of 13 AMSA national leaders and staff members participated in the Health Action 2026 Conference, hosted by Families USA, a national umbrella advocacy organization supporting national, regional, and local organizing in the movement for health justice. We were in the company of over 700 organizers, activists, story-tellers, movement leaders, and us – the future physicians(!), united in the fight for health justice and equity through the eventual achievement of universal healthcare coverage. Engaging directly with the political realities of the present moment,
we came together to articulate vision, clarify strategy, and explore tactics for building durable power, and advancing policy toward guaranteed healthcare for all.
We aren’t where we want to be, where we need to be – everyone having access to what they need to actualize the truth that healthcare is a human right – but it is certainly a life worth living, spending it fighting for people’s right to healthcare (no matter the short or long-term outcome: getting into good trouble for any human right is intrinsically a moral good). We’ll have more reflections from the Health Action Conference in the next newsletter.
Speaking of being in good company in the fight for justice, we are so thrilled to introduce to you Dr. Taylor Spears, who has joined the AMSA Reproductive Health Project as the Reproductive Health Project Fellow. She has been actively engaged in the programs of the Reproductive Health Project since 2022. She’s just earned her MD from Meharry Medical College (YAY! CONGRATS, DR. SPEARS!), and is pursuing OB/GYN, with an interest in abortion care and reproductive justice. In this week’s newsletter, Dr. Spears introduces herself and offers some thoughts and reflections on some of her experiences through the AMSA RHP. Sending big AMSA love to you all!
Read & Share AMSA’s statement on the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti,
ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System
