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"Last year's GOP takeover of the U.S. House and statehouses across the country has dramatically changed the shape of the nation's abortion debate. It has also given a boost to an even more far-reaching effort: the push to legally redefine when life itself begins. The question being raised in legal terms is: When does someone become a person? The answer varies under the law. "The definition of personhood ranges if you're talking about property law, or inheritance, or how the census is taken," says Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project. All those differences are exactly what Keith Mason wants to change. He's president of Personhood USA, a group that's trying to rewrite the laws and constitutions of every state - and some countries - to recognize someone as a person "exactly at creation," he says. "It's fertilization; it's when the sperm meets the egg." Mason says the basic problem is that science has advanced faster than policymaking. "We know, without a shadow of a doubt, when human life begins," he says. "But our laws have not caught up to what we know." And according to his organization, those laws should recognize every fertilized egg as an individual and complete human being."