Hermaphroditism

[Socrates]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Dec 13 2005, 05:55 PM']Babies can be born with both sets of organs, but as the Church rightly states the child will choose one orientation or another no matter what anatomy they start with. The problem can be with the doctors who feel the child must be surgically altered to fit a preconceived notion of normal.
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This is a difficult issue, and I'm not sure if there's always one right answer, but the language here is troubling.

It sounds similar to that used by those who claim "gender" is merely a social construct, and people should be free to "choose" their own "gender,' regardless of their physical anatomy. (The whole "transexual" nonsense).

I think a kid should grow up as a boy or a girl, not an "it," but that perhaps more effort should be put into determining the baby's true sex in such cases (rather than being determined by a surgeon's convenience).

(Something tells me this thread is going to start another brouhaha on here, as this topic is wont to on phatmass )

[beatty07]

I highly recommend this article from First Things...

[url="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0411/articles/mchugh.htm"]http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0411...cles/mchugh.htm[/url]

He makes a pretty compelling argument, I won't try to summarize it here.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Socrates' date='Dec 13 2005, 07:09 PM'](Something tells me this thread is going to start another brouhaha on here, as this topic is wont to on phatmass  )
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no, I think for better or worse we've already chased away anyone who would cause such a "brouhaha"

[chickens4life]

It can actualy happen that someone is concieved with XXX, XXY. -Y or -X , however rare it may be. and I don't know what should be done in these cases.
Although it dose not seam right to decide for some one befor the can do so for them self.

but the majority of the time it is only a physilogical deformity of someones gentalia, who has a normal genetic make up(XX or XY). in such a case I think it is clearly wrong to "fix" someone so that they do not look like their genetic sex -because that makes them reproductively incapable-. although it could be ok to "correct" the deformaty so that they are capable of reprodection, but only then

[MissScripture]

If it is XXX, then it would be a girl, because there is no Y...I think that in bio our teacher said that XXY would be a boy, but I can't remember for sure. And I just remembered that humans default to female, so even if someone has an XY chromosome, they could still be female, because a gene on the Y chromosome could be defective, meaning they would be female. So, what I said in my last post wouldn't always work...

[Dreamweaver]

Genetics 315 revisited.

XXY - Klinefelter Syndrome. The men tend to have underdeveloped secondary sex features or be infertile. There may also be other physical defects and the child may have slight mental retardation. Yes, people with Klinefelter are men, due to the Y chromosome.

XXX or XO (only one sex chromosome, X) - Turner syndrome. Girls only. Usually results in a shorter stature, "webbed neck", lack of ovarian development. Also the possibility of hearing imparement.

There are other variations such as XYY (controversy arises since someone hypothesized that the extra Y makes a man more aggressive, since the prison population has a higher percentage of XYY men than the non-incarcerated public), XXXY, XXXXY...

Ah, genetics. :