Potential vs. Actual Persons

In today's Columbian letters to the editor, a found this gem. It is an example of how someone can throw in a word that will obfuscate the real issue. Here is the letter of Margie Bouchers of Yacolt, WA (emphasis added by me):

Extending the logic
I had to chuckle reading Karen Korinke's May 13 letter, "Guard rights of innocent," in which she refers to fetuses as "preborn people." I had a bit of fun extending her line of thinking.
Why not harvest every sperm and egg from every individual on the planet, young and old alike? Surely each sperm or egg has the potential to be a preborn person. These sperm and eggs would be housed in places called Preborn Orphan Banks.
For those men who wasted their sperm, why, we could charge them with reckless endangerment. Further, anyone refusing to participate in this glorious life-enhancing process would be judged as felons and therefore as heinous murderers and could also be put to death.

I highlighted the word potential for a reason. Karen Korinke's letter talked not about potential people but preborn people.

Bouchers inserts the word potential to obfuscate the issue. In order to justify in her mind that the taking of preborn life is okay she has created this concept of potential vs. actual people. Here's the question for anyone who makes this distinction: Scentifically, when does a potential person become an actual person?

A human sperm with 23 chromosomes merges with a human egg with 23 chromosomes to create a unique human being. If, at this point, we only have a potential person then what criteria must this potential person obtain in order to have obtained actual personhood?

Note that those who make this distinction must know the criteria. If they don't know the criteria then how do they know they are aborting a potential person rather than an actual person?

Is birth the demarcation line between actual and potential persons? If so, then what is the magical thing that occurs simply by passing through the birth canal? And since pro-aborts advocate partial birth abortion (i.e. the head still resides in the birth canal while its skull is pierced and its brains sucked out then obviously it is the head that must undergo this transformation since all but the head has passed from the birth canal.

Of course, those who hold to potential personhood won't define the criteria for actual personhood. They don't because their criteria would eliminate some obvious actual persons. Level of Consciousness as a measurement? Do those with Downs Syndrome qualify? What of the newborn? An adult is more conscious of their surroundings than a toddler? Does an Alzheimer patient qualify as an actual person?

In their attempt to obfuscate the obvious, the holders of potential personhood actually create more issues than they resolve. And it shows their diliberate dishonesty because they never seriously try to identify the demarcation between potential and actual.