can a true hermaphrodite impregnate itself with its own sperm via insemination?
I am of the impression from seeing several medical documentaries that people who are intersex at birth will usually have one set of sexual organs more developed than the other.
I don;t believe there is a case where someone had a fully functional set of gonads, a fully functioning set of overies and a uterus.
My precursory searches turned up nothing.
I’m not assuming you’re talking about humans… right?
In which case the answer is yes; earthworms do it a lot.
It’s pretty much universally accepted that there has never been a true human hermaphrodite. The interplay of sex-determining genes is such that if even if you have both types of equiptment at least one of them doesn’t work (is sterile).
Yes, if you just count fertilization as pregnancy. Although extremely, extremely, extremely rare, it is possible for a chimeric human to be composed of both a male and female zygote and therefore, to be born with one functional teste and a functional ovary. The fertilization would not occur naturally.
That hasn’t really happen’d with a human, has it?
Nitpick (but it’s a pretty bit nit, and it matters for the thread): There are plenty of these cases. They’re called “women”. Ovaries are one type of gonad, testes another. That’s also why hermaphrodites can’t impregnate themselves; you don’t have both ovaries and testes as they develop from the same proto-gonads.
pokes Priceguy in the eye with a stick
I was going to say the same thing, testicles and ovaries are BOTH gonads.
IANAD or a Hermaprhoditologist, but… I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express and I’ve also read Middlesex. While it’s a novel rather than a textbook, Eugenides did years of research into human hermaphroditism.
These are not spoilers (you learn them in the first chapter of the book): The main character, Kalliope, is born a girl by all appearances and is raised as one for the first 15 years of her life. At that time it is discovered “she” is really a boy (the testicles were internal and the penis never formed). This condition and its opposite- boys who are born with penises [usually tiny even after puberty] but who are chromosomally female, are the most common type of hermaphroditism among humans (at least according to Eugenides in interviews and the notes of his book). The vast majority of people who are born with this condition (and there are far more than you might think- according to one article I read about 1 birth in 15,000 is sexually ambiguous) go undiagnosed and because their reproductive organs are incorrectly formed they are almost always sterile (though hermaphroditism does run in families). In developed countries when the condition diagnosed it usually results in hormone therapy a nd surgery (sometimes called “gender reassignment”, though it’s actually less a reassignment than a correction).
Anyway, from what I’ve read, most human hermaphrodites do not have two sets of external genitalia, and most are sterile.
Yes, there was a boy born who was chimeric which means that two zygotes fused back into one. The zygotes were of different sexes and the female part of him developed a fallopian tube, ovary and part of a uterus while the male part of him had a testes. They originally thought that he just had an undescended teste but when they did surgery they discovered the female parts and subsequent genetic testing found that he was half male, half female - a true hermaphrodite. They removed the female parts, so we don’t know what would have happened had the individual gone through puberty.
Most of the websites that have details on this particular case require registration but here is an overview so you know I’m not just making this up. 
Thanks, but I meant has an intersexed human has ever impregnated emself?
No, the mechanics requiring such an act are so rare that there has never been a case in medical history. It’s not impossible, it’s just never been recorded. There are stories if true, certainly suggest that, but there is no way we can prove them this long after they happened.