Men are traditionally given pretty much all the credit for making babies. We traditionally name babies after men, as if they were the ones who did it. Lineage, at least in our culture (the one being examined) has been traditionally passed through the father’s side. Our expressions regarding pregnancy hint at a model where men are the agents and women are passive—-planting a seed, bun in the oven, when you were a twinkle in your father’s eye. Even when we discovered that conception requires a cell from each parent, we assumed, incorrectly, that the egg sits there passively to be fertilized by the sperm, instead of viewing it as a merger that involves both cells going on a journey to meet and merge, which is biologically more accurate.
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To say that something is a person as soon as conception happens is to claim, in essence, that men make babies by ejaculating. To say that it’s a person at birth is to say women make babies by being pregnant for 9 months, and that while the father kicked in some DNA, the person who actually made the baby—-provided the time, energy, calories, proteins—-was the mother. Which also happens to be true.