The first episode of the second series of the podcast “Conversaciones AFINes,” titled The Invisible Trimester: Silence and Taboo in the First 12 Weeks, is now available on Spotify and Ivoox. This new installment addresses the findings of research on the experiences and challenges faced by pregnant individuals, their families, and healthcare professionals during the first trimester of pregnancy.
The series will consist of 8 episodes released weekly, featuring national and international professionals in the fields of anthropology, psychiatry, obstetrics, and nursing. These episodes are the result of research conducted by the AFIN Group from a social and interdisciplinary anthropological perspective, in collaboration with health sciences. Topics covered include preeclampsia, early pregnancy losses, and the care of high-risk pregnancies.
Each episode will feature guests who will converse with the AFIN researchers leading this series: Carolina Remorini, Ana Cerezuela, Lynne McIntyre, and Anna Molas.
The first episode, which focuses on the beginnings of life and the complex decisions, values, and beliefs surrounding human embryos and their history, presents an interview by Carolina Remorini with Lynn Morgan, anthropologist and emeritus professor at Mount Holyoke College in the United States. Morgan, with extensive research experience in her country and in various Latin American communities, opens the series by addressing various topics and concerns surrounding the first trimester of pregnancy. The discussion covers the cultural knowledge and practices that influence gestation and birth in different contexts, as well as the experiences of loss, abortion, and childbirth. The conversation offers a reflection on the role of scientific knowledge in understanding the development of life and death, and how this knowledge, along with other forms of understanding, underpins decisions, positions, and taboos that fuel debates in contemporary societies.