From: eeb1@ellis.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Subject: DIPLOID PREJUDICE
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 17:15:57 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.001030.12774@cs.dal.ca>
franklin@ug.cs.dal.ca (Steve Franklin) writes:
>In <1992Apr08.185851.8689@sdd.hp.com>
>regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard) writes:

>>The end result of an egg that doesn't meet a sperm is also death.

>   No, conception has not occurred.

Never on all of talk.abortion have I read such blatant anti-haploid
prejudice!  Not only is Steve Franklin denying the unborn haploid
human is full and equal rights as a member of the human species, but
he is also denying the existence of its very life!

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 (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