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But I do not mean to suggest that an embryo or zygote is ever not human. A newly fertilized egg is completely human — in that it is genetically not a mouse or a daisy — but then again, "so is every egg and sperm cell." ¹¹ So if a sperm and an egg are just as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg, wouldn't it then be murder to destroy a sperm or an egg? "Hundreds of millions of sperm cells ... are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died?" ¹⁹

One common response of pro-lifers to this line of questioning is that the simple existence of forty-six human chromosomes is the determining factor. Egg and sperm cells contain twenty-three chromosomes each, and only after they combine does the resultant cell have all forty-six.

But the same advancing-technology argument that makes viability an unacceptable determinant also points up the fallacy inherent in this position. "Some lower animals," notes Sagan, "can be grown in the laboratory from a single body cell." And every single cell in every human body except for the sperm or egg cells contains a full set of forty-six chromosomes, and all the DNA necessary to create an entire human being ... exactly as a fertilized egg does. Under that rationale, Sagan points out, if this type of cloning technology were ever developed for humans, we would be "committing genocide by shedding a drop of blood." ¹⁹

Barbara Ehrenreich turns the absurdity of such a scenario towards humor in her tongue-in-cheek essay, "Saving My Zygotes":

Of course medical science has to take some of the credit too. It just keeps turning up tiny persons where you'd least expect them. Moving on from zygotes, consider any other type of cell, say, one of my fingertip cells. Right now, that's all it is. But someday — if the guys at NIH would stop focusing on AIDS — we'll have a way to clone that little fella into a complete, freestanding individual. Just like me; in fact, me all over again.

Which is why we've started the campaign to stop the slaughter of human cells. We call this slaughter "cellucide," which is not the same as the unsightly puckered flesh on your upper legs. It's the routine mass murder that goes on every day in the form of tonsillectomies, mastectomies, amputations, hysterectomies, and discarded scabs. ⁸

Obviously, a body cell will never be considered a "complete" human being. Perhaps less obvious (at least to non-embryologists) but just as true is the fact that a fertilized egg isn't a "complete human" either. Nor is an eight-month fetus, not even in the genetic sense and certainly not in a developmental one. A newborn baby is not a complete human, nor is a six-year-old child ... but then, neither are you. "Fertilization, the injection of sperm DNA into the egg, is just one of the many small steps toward full human potential. It seems arbitrary to invest this biological event with any special moral significance. As we have seen, we are more than the sum of our chromosomes; DNA is not destiny." ¹¹

In fact, "completeness" isn't what we should be looking for here at all. Humans continue to grow and develop right up until death, and surely everyone agrees that "personhood" usually occurs sometime before that.

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