I would say that it’s human life at or shortly after conception. It’s alive, it’s a distinct organism, and it’s genetically human. If we found a blastocyst on Mars we’d say “human life found in Mars!” It’s in a stage of the human lifecycle where it’s completely dependent on the mother, but that doesn’t negate either the human part or the life part.

So I think the real debate is over when it’s acceptable to kill a human at an early stage of development. That is fundamentally a moral compromise, in the same way that e.g. the law of self defense is a moral compromise. Nothing in science says a fetus has a “right to life” just as nothing in science says anyone has a “right to bodily autonomy.”

I think partisans and ideologues try to take this issue to extremes based on principle, but I think most people (especially mothers) have a mushy view. They know miscarriages happen naturally in the early weeks and so support some abortion right. They support exceptions for life of mother or fetal abnormalities even in later stages. But for they’ve also seen ultrasounds showing something that looks a lot like a baby at 15 weeks and aren’t ideological enough to think you should be able to kill that without a really good reason.