R. Martin Palmer Life begins like everything else, at the beginning. At the moment of fertilization, a new human life begins. She is person and not property because no property has the property of building itself.
Nothing is added after the moment of fertilization.
It is all locked in. Not only the color of our hair and eyes but even how long we will live, accident or sickness not intervening, is there in the very beginning. The complete information necessary to build the new human being is written in the smallest subscript of the universe. The human embryo, which would fit on the tip of a pin, seems very small. To us, a professional basketball player is big because he is taller than we are, and a baby in a crib is little because she is smaller than we are.