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The question is when a preexisting soul is assigned to a particular body.

It is a biological fact that something like 25% of all fertilized eggs never implant. They are simply discarded. Does each of those fertilized eggs have a soul? Are each of those fertilized eggs thus doomed for eternity because they were never born, never baptized, and never accepted Jesus?

Our Church says that the moment of “ensoulment,” for want of a better word, is not known.

Having said that, I don’t know that Orrin Hatch’s view of stem cell research matches the view of the majority of Mormons. If he believes that it’s okay to create embryos for research, it sure doesn’t match mine.

You have provided some very interesting questions and provoked my thoughts on the topic of when does "ensoulment" take place. I hadn't thought that ensoulment may take place for every fertilized egg that does not attach or it may take place at attachment.

The fact that the LDS church has not defined the exact moment of ensoulment "yet" is not a contradiction in Doctrine. I.E. just because God has not yet revealed the exact second ensoulment takes place to us yet doesn't mean we believe it one way or the other. If God reveals ensoulment takes place exactly at attachment I'm fine with that. If he reveals it takes place at fertilizartion I'm fine with that.

However, even fertilization is not necessarily an all in one moment. Anyone who has a basic undeertsanding of biology realizes that the sperm may penetrate the outer shell of the egg (or that more than one sperm may pentrate the egg for that matter) but that actual fusion of the gametes takes more time. IOW, does ensoulment take place when the sperm and egg become one physically (pentrating the outer layer) or when the process of internal gamete fusion is complete. Given that the process of gamete fusion takes time at what point in the fusion process does ensoulment occur? (Ugghh, this biology talk is taking me back to my college biology class where the professor spent most of the semester talking about his own research on splitting Frog Oocytes with hair). Given that twinning is possible up to 16 days after ferilization if ensoulment takes place right at gamete fusion are two sould contained in the egg? Given that soul is generally defined as one spirit and one body at what point does the second soul come along or are they both present at fusion? I.E. can two spirits & one (gamete) body make a soul? (I'm a twin, but we are fraternal, two seperate eggs, so we missed out on this two souls stuck in one fertilized gamete fusion problem).

Given that the pro-life movement has not even answered all these questions or most Christian churches for that matter, I'm guessing this thread is another case of holding Mormons up to a litmus test that many other conservatives and many other Christians would not even pass. Which brings us to a second point about litmus tests.....

Currently the LDS church has the lowest abortion rate of any group, even Catholics, Evangelicals, non-evangelical protestants, Jews etc. While there appears to be an attempt at nitpicking doctrines that have not yet been revealed to us, obviously something the LDS church is doing and teaching on the matter translates to lower abortions in practice. IOW, While the purists may feel outrage on Doctrinal grounds towards the LDS church perhaps a more effetive use of their outrage would be to their own flocks who have fallen behind the Mormons in actual practice when it comes to infanticide.

As a side not, from something I learned on my Spanish speaking mission. In spanish the word for abortion and miscariage are the same. On my mission when teaching about abortion we would distinguish it by "aborto" (miscarriage) or "aborto intencional" (intentional abortion).