From: eeb1@ellis.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: DIPLOID BIGOTRY!
Date: 4 Oct 92 04:02:28 GMT
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Sep24.204627.28435@csus.edu>
chaneysa@nextnet.csus.edu (Stephen A Chaney) writes:

>"Fetus != person" -> discrimination. There's no reason why a z/e/f
>should not be a person except by standards that could discriminate
>against "born" persons, too. They're human, growing individuals (not
>potential individuals like sperm & eggs) who are directing their own

DIPLOID BIGOTRY!

Sperm and eggs (and polar bodies, kindly do not forget that they exist
merely because they play no part in the creation of diploid humans)
are not "potential" individuals, they are individuals.  Short-lived
individuals.  Haploid individuals.  One-celled individuals.  But
individuals nonetheless.

>bodily development. Unless you can show me who else is genetically
>directing their development besides themselves, declaring them
>non-persons is nothing but sheer discrimination. 

>I oppose legal abortion chiefly because I oppose discrimination. 

Then why oh why do you discriminate against haploid humans -- who are,
after all, the VAST majority of humanity.  The fact that they are
one-celled and utterly helpless should not be taken to mean that they
are worthless.

Please, gentle readers of talk.abortion, read carefully the remainder
of my article, which explains the true nature of the human species,
and why our short-lived haploid brothers and sisters deserve full
rights as human beings.  Clearly, a biology lesson is in order.  Once
the readers of talk.abortion are aware of the simple facts of human
biology, I am sure that they will see the truth and support full legal
recognition of personhood for haploid humans.

Jim Purdon has pointed out on t.a. in the past (if you're reading
this, thank you for converting me to the Cult of the Gametes, Jim!)
that the human species alterates between generations of diploid and
haploid organisms.  A diploid male or female has haploid offspring by
asexual reproduction.  We call the haploid offspring of female diploid
humans "eggs" and "polar bodies" and the haploid offspring of male
diploid humans "sperm".  English does not possess the proper gender
terms to use for haploid humans (yet another display of diploid
humans' prejudice against haploid humans!); in this post, I use the
term "female-neuter" for eggs and polar bodies, "male-male" for sperm
with a Y chromosome, and "male-female" for sperm with an X chromosome.

Regrettably, haploid humans have a very short life expectancy.  Eggs
can only survive for about a day, polar bodies usually survive less
than that before being eaten by the eggs, and sperm of both genders
can only survive for five or six days at most.  Also regrettably,
haploid humans (like both haploid and diploid members of many species
-- salmon, mayflies, etc.) die immediately after reproduction.  This
reproduction is sexual reproduction between a female-neuter egg and a
sperm of either gender (polar bodies are uniformly infertile).  If the
sperm is male-male, the result is a male diploid human; if
male-female, the result is a female diploid human.  In either case, we
refer to the diploid human as a "zygote".

The development of diploid humans is reasonably well known on
talk.abortion; if the diploid human survives long enough the "zygote"
becomes an "embryo" and then a "fetus" and is removed from its female
diploid human grandmother.  After this event, termed "birth", the
diploid human must still wait several years (anywhere from nine to
eighteen, depending on the individual and whether the haploid human is
male or female) before sexual maturity, when he or she then begins
producing haploid human offspring.

So the readers of talk.abortion can now see why this brutal
discrimination against haploid humans MUST end.  Remember, boys and
girls, sperm, eggs, and polar bodies are people too.

--
"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes."   - Robert A. Heinlein

Pro-Choice       Anti-Roe                             - E. Elizabeth Bartley
-- 
Pro-Choice                 Anti-Roe                     - E. Elizabeth Bartley
            Abortions should be safe, legal, early, and rare.

Cthulhu for President -- when you're tired of voting for the lesser of 2 evils.
Newsgroups: talk.abortion