How can embryos be human when identical twins separate days after fertilization?

[FranciscanDoc]

I am a faithful Catholic and am obedient to the Church’s teaching on embryological stem cell research and the like, but I have a question that I can’t seem to find an answer to. When an egg is fertilized with sperm, the Church teaches that it is now a human being and must be treated as such. However, biologically, identical twins separate into two separate embryos around two to three days after fertilization. Since I would think it’s obvious that identical twins don’t share one soul, but rather they each have their own, how can the Church defend logically its position that life begins at conception?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

How can the Church defend logically its position that there are three distinct Persons in the one true God? This isn’t to say that the Trinity is like identical twins but that identical twins – or identical triplets, as there are in rare cases – might perhaps be a faint image of the Trinity. We don’t know how the “mechanics” of human ensoulment work – anymore than we know how the one true God can be three distinct Persons – but we do know that God certainly can create two human souls within one fertilized ovum.