[DumpsterDiver]

At the completion of the process of fertilization, the human creature emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism...

I have zero medical background so can you (or somebody) tell me what the "process of fertilization" entails? Is it completed after the sperm cell breaks through the cell wall of the egg, after implantation, or when?

[hocndoc]

Don't worry about any lack of medical background. Unfortunately, too many doctors don't understand human embryology as a factual science, and allow their own personal prejudices to dominate their thinking.

Here's an answer from the article:

"""n the words of the ethicist Renée Mirkes: “At the completion of the process of fertilization when the male and female pronuclei of the human progenitors’ sperm and ovum are indistinguishable and lose their nuclear envelopes, the human creature emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic human organism. This individuated human organism actually has the natural capacity for the person-defining activities of reasoning, willing, desiring, and relating to others. The human individual also possesses the actual, natural capacity to develop continuously into the mature (maximally differentiated) organism of a functional adult human being, the organic structural development of which is under the control of a sequence of primordial centers which begin with nuclear DNA or the genome, and eventually develops into the central nervous system, especially the fully developed brain with its cerebral cortex…The new zygote, a member of the species homo sapiens, with its particular (that is, genome-specific) bodily “matter” unified and organized, that is, formed or enlivened by means of its life principle—the soul and all of its person-defining natural powers---is a whole, living, human person. The difference between the individual in her adult stage and in her zygotic stage is not one of personhood but of development.”19"""