I have been married for about 15 months now, and have used birth control the whole time. Despite the fact that I deeply desire a baby (and would love one right now, thanks), there was never a question of having kids right away in my situation. Frankly, pregnancy has the potential to kill me, and if/when we pursue that option it will have to be very carefully planned, prayed about, and monitored. Right now, I still don’t know if that will ever be an option for us. (Our alternative would probably be adoption.) When I got engaged my doctor almost had a hernia, insisting that I get on birth control right away (which I didn’t, because I knew nothing would be necessary till we tied the knot!). She had had patients die because they were pregnant and didn’t know it before. For me pregnancy is a serious issue that MUST be approached with caution and prayer.

For that reason, I have never felt guilty about being on birth control. I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about whether it was “right or wrong”. I firmly believe that we as LDS parents are meant to raise strong, loving, and maybe even large families. I can totally see how birth control would not be appropriate in every instance. For me, I never questioned whether or not it was right or wrong. I knew that it was the right (and really, the only) choice. I hope to someday before too long get the chance to bear a child of my own, but that may not be the wisest choice for me. (I want my children to have a mother to raise them, not a mother who died because of complications of pregnancy.) Either way, birth control is a must for me.

Also, one other reason I am grateful for birth control – I learned this summer that I have osteopenia (pre-osteoporosis thinning of the bone) in my spine, something that isn’t uncommon in cystic fibrosis, my disease. I mentioned to the technician doing the bone scan that I take birth control pills with estrogen and she said “That’s good – if you didn’t, your bones would be a lot worse!” So… there are good things about hormonal birth control, too.

Also, I would not even consider talking to the bishop about a vasectomy. I think it’s a personal decision to be made between husband and wife.

(and #1, thank you as well.)

Touchy topic = touchy commenters and even touchier admins. But I’m very pleased with the conversation as a whole. Well done, Shelah.

(In fact, on our first and only date, my then-date, now-husband said, “Please understand that my goal in dating you is marriage, and children pretty quickly after that. I’ve been waiting a long time to be a husband and dad, and I think you’re the right one. If you’re agreeable, cool. If that’s not the right goal for you, please let me know.” I was okay with that–for someone as lacking in spontaneity as I am, the instant “YES, DO THIS” confirmation was a real shocker. )

Thanks again to all of you who have shared your stories. They continue to help me shape my feelings about birth control and how we use it in our home.

Emily (86), thanks very much for your thoughtful response. I suspect that our core disagreement is in whether personal narrative is a reliable way to arrive at objective moral truth—what you call “our capacity to see others clearly than to hear their honest, real stories.” In my mind, the very act of artfully arranging the chaos and misdirection of lived experience into a coherent narrative is a step away from objective clarity: to construct a narrative, we must shape, omit, and emphasize different kinds of information, and we are inevitably going to do so according to our own limitations and biases. A personal narrative is going to be deeply informed by whatever blind-spots and delusions we harbor about ourselves and our motives, and heaven knows we all have them. This is not to say that personal narrative is “corrupt”; on the contrary it’s important in several capacities, including maintaining our sanity and self-identity, organizing our memories, and creating trust between individuals. But it is not particularly good at arriving at moral clarity, because its epistemological resources are so limited, it can only rely for legitimacy on a single person’s inevitably limited, inevitably biased experience. That is why the only response Kathryn could make to me was, in effect, “shut up”—personal narrative, for all its uses, simply doesn’t have the epistemological foundation to respond any other way.

I love this. Thank you.

When the time has been right for me to get pregnant again, nothing stands in my way; not a lack of insurance or even the lack of a job. I’m sure people will think that’s horrible, but in retrospect it wasn’t that big of a deal. The Lord blesses those who are willing to make such a leap of faith, I think, and having a baby is the ultimate leap of faith.

When I was pregnant with baby #6 I felt like we were finally finished having kids. I had never felt that way before. It wasn’t that I was tired or overwhelmed (although some days I was). I just finally felt like my family was complete. I was 35 and my husband was 41. I had a vague inkling that vasectomies were frowned upon, but I knew we were done, so my husband and I felt completely fine about his getting one. Honestly, I would never have discussed the subject with my bishop any more that I would have asked his opinion on how close together we should space our children. I felt, and still feel, like The Lord takes a special interest in women because we share His job as creators of life. As such He will direct us as to what is best for our families. Often His plans are not our plans.

To me, birth control is a powerful blessing and is another example of the way the Lord gives us agency. Just like sex, it can be used unwisely or it can be used with faith, following the Lord’s counsel.