Winston Peters defender of unborn children and their mothers!
Media Release 17 October 2026
Winston Peters, leader of NZ First recently confirmed his belief that “human life began at conception”.
Right to Life believes that Winston Peters is an outstanding advocate for justice and he is admirably placed to now promote legislation that would give legal recognition of the unborn child from conception as a human being endowed with a right to life. This legislation would be pro-life and pro-women, according to women the respect that should be given to women who are with child.
Right to Life believes that Winston Peters could be the statesman that New Zealand desperately needs. Statesmen are concerned for the next generation, while politicians are concerned about the next election. Right to Life commends Winston Peters for his statesman-like support for the scientific truth that from the moment of conception, the unborn child is a new and unique human being, endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to life.
Right to Life believes that every unborn child, regardless of the circumstances of their conception, is a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God’s loving creation endowed with human rights, the foundation right being a right to life.
It is not the State or Parliament which confers our human rights on us, it is God, the author of life who does this.
Since 1961, our nation has suffered from the intolerable injustice of “the born alive rule”, now embedded in section 159 of the Crimes Act 1961, which states that the unborn child does not legally become a human being, until it is born.
In 2008, it was Justice Forrest Miller in the Wellington High Court, presiding in Right to Life’s case against the Abortion Supervisory Committee, who stated in his judgment, that the born alive rule was “a legal fiction” founded on convenience, rather than a medical or moral principle.
“A legal right to life would be incongruous in such a law, for it would treat the unborn child as a separate legal person, possessing a status fundamentally incompatible with induced abortion. Far from modifying the born alive rule, the abortion law rests on it.”
It is an appalling injustice that Parliament would challenge God by legislating to deny God’s beautiful plan for pro-creation by denying the humanity of the unborn child and its right to life.
We should follow the wonderful example of 14 nations who have legislated to recognise and protect their unborn children from conception as human beings endowed with a right to life. Those nations are the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Hungary, Kenya, Madagascar, Paraguay, Philippines, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil and Puerto Rico.
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc.
