When human life begins, I believe, is a matter for personal conscience. Not the type of conscience that is profounded from the pulpit or screeched from the streets by various influence groups, but the kind of conscience that the individual themselves can discover via education.
Research the issue - the facts are everywhere and easily available - read them and make up your own mind. If you believe that life begins when the glint appears in the fathers eye, or any time in between then until the newborn draws their first breath, then that, for you, is when life begins and you cannot be wrong.
Take the science route to awareness or the personality route, it doesn't matter. It's like religion, the belief is in the personal observance not the method.

as a practising Catholic, i find the comments on religion disturbing, in so far as the accepted view is that somehow i now invalidate my ability to think for myself, to have a valid contribution to make and that my religion will so colour my outlook as to render my opinion useless or nonsense.
i believe as many state, that the beginning of life occurs when the two 'living' cells join to create/begin that new creation. i also believe that the soul now comes in to play. can i qualify or quantify this? No
does that make my opinion worth less? you judge.
i also believe that as this new being has all the potential to grow, that as those who have participated in this act of creation, we have a responsibility to protect and care for this new being.
my faith in a creator, in one who is love, just convicts me of this belief, impresses on me the sacredness of every life and as another stated we as beings, live out our time in the best way possible. whether by using our intellect for future research, study, etc, or our talents in whatever other way we can contribute. however i do not believe that unless we have a contribution to make as human beings that we are worthless, on the contrary those who have to rely on others enable those others to express and share those talents and gifts that they have been endowed.

Thank you Michael for you scientific, factual and refreshing article.

The egg and sperm are indeed very much alive before fertilization.

The distinction between egg, sperm and the fertilized egg, is the religious belief that the zygote is a new individual or person, by virtue of acquiring a soul upon fertilization.

For some time after fertilization, the fertilized egg can split into two to form identical twins (this is not my opinion or belief but a scientific fact). If there was an individual soul/person whom we will call John, what did happen to him when the fertilized egg divided into two? Is he one of the twins? If he no longer exists and has been replaced by Tom and Steve, where did he go? Did he die? If so, where are his remains?

When the fertilized egg split into two, did John's soul also divide into two or did God take back John's soul and supplied Tom and Steve with their own souls?

These are the questions that the religious need to think about, if they are going to persist with the belief that the zygote is a person like you and I.

Maryan your kind of argument does not a bit destroy my own views of what a soul is about. Let me try to explain it in a simple manner. As I did set out in my published books, I take the view that a soul is like a bunch of straws say each filled with certain characteristics. You get them from your parents and also, so to say, others are added as you go along. It would explain also why twins often have simular characteristics. Your John therefore will be in both Tom and Steve and if there is an Ann, and other siblings at the same time they all will have them. Now, the personality of a person basically comes from the straws that are the strongest and the weaker straws as such are the hidden personality characteristics. Hence, with a split personality you have that pending which straws are at a given moment the strongest that combination of straws is the personality coming out.

When people die their content of their straws, so to say, are floating about and so will spread themselves out to find other bodies as their home. This is why many people over decades may end up all having the belief they were for example Napoleon Bonaparte (or others who lived long ago), as they may all have ended up with a bit of his soul. Likewise, with others. It also explains how a child in England was able to make known where in the USA something was buried without the child ever having been there and no one else knew it had been buried there. Simply, the child had the content of a straw in itself, hence the knowledge.

It also explains why husband and wife over decades become so alike where they may duplicate each others characteristics.

Take for example my wife’s late husband. I was his Attorney. After he died my wife and I became married. I was much opposite then her late husband. I did however hyphenate his surname to me and my wife hyphenated my surname to hers,

Continue..

Part-2
this so my wife would not loose her identity she had lived with for so long. He was a civil engineer, architect, etc, and I was of a total different background.

Yet, my wife at times calls me by her late husbands name because in some ways I appear to her more and more as like her husband. Not because I lost what I was but because she views I have also taken on characteristics of her husband. OK she makes clear the good characteristics!

Over the years more and more people are wrongly referring to me as I am my wife’s late husband, but that doesn’t worry me. Not because I look anything like her late husband but because I have in certain ways pursued matters with my wife’s late husband also was pursuing.
Still there are differences because I am anti-racism where as my wife’s late husband was much of a racist. He was a drinker and I am not. Etc, etc.
I am very much a handyman but my wife’s late husband was not particularly. Yet, when I now do renovating to the house somehow I have a more specific interest in how to do matters and when I talk to my wife about structural pressures, etc, she comments that I talk now like her late husband.

This post only sets out matters in limited format but I for one has no qualms about the benefit I view I gained over the years.

Perhaps, because of the likelihood that I may have gained, so to say, some characteristics of her late husband it may have enabled us to settle in so well over the years in that regard. And if my straw theory (filled with characteristics) were to be consider feasible then you do not need to worry of John is still in Tom or Steve as you can be assured both have John in them.

Who says a "soul" is just a single thing and does not exist out of thousands of characteristics such as in the straws theory?

Silly red herring is the time of 'ensoulment'.

Fact is who knows? Does a particle physicist know exactly where an electron is at any one time?

If the zygote is left alone and is about to turn into two lives what difference does that make to how we treat this new life?