Across the library

Birth control

Nothing in Latter-day Saint teaching has moved further in sixty years. From "rebellion against God" in 1958 to "a decision for each married couple" today — with the documents in between, quoted and linked.

If you ask whether Latter-day Saints can use birth control, the answer today is yes, and it is entirely between a couple and God. If you had asked the same question in 1958, a widely sold church reference book would have told you that you were guilty of gross wickedness. Both of those are real answers given by real church sources, and the distance between them is the story. This page walks it in order.

The old teaching, at its hardest

Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine was on the shelf of a generation of Latter-day Saint homes. Its Birth Control entry did not hedge:

It follows that those who practice birth control — the regulation of the number of births in a family by the employment of artificial means or contraceptives to prevent conception — are running counter to the foreordained plan of the Almighty. They are in rebellion against God and are guilty of gross wickedness.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Birth Control”, 1958 first edition

The entry survived the 1966 revision, and it quoted a church president to make its case:

I regret, I think it is a crying evil, that there should exist a sentiment or a feeling among any members of the Church to curtail the birth of their children. I think that is a crime wherever it occurs… I have no hesitancy in saying that I believe this is one of the greatest crimes of the world today, this evil practice.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Birth Control”, 1966 second edition, p. 61

1969: the First Presidency states it formally

A reference book is one man's compilation. On April 14, 1969, the First Presidency issued its own statement — the first formal one on the subject in fifty years — and it landed in the same place:

We seriously regret that there should exist a sentiment or feeling among any members of the Church to curtail the birth of their children.

First Presidency statement, April 14, 1969, reproduced in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought

It is contrary to the teachings of the Church artificially to curtail or prevent the birth of children.

First Presidency statement, April 14, 1969, reproduced in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought

The same statement did carry a qualification that mattered, and that later became the whole doctrine: that husbands must be considerate of their wives, who bear the greater burden of both childbearing and raising children.

That same April, Ezra Taft Benson put it to general conference in the sharpest form it ever took:

The Lord did not say to multiply and replenish the earth if it is convenient, or if you are wealthy, or after you have gotten your schooling, or when there is peace on earth, or until you have four children.

Ezra Taft Benson, To the Humble Followers of Christ, General Conference, April 1969, Conference Report pp. 10–15

1971: printed in the church magazine

Two years later the church's own magazine stated the position in seven words, with no qualification attached:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints strongly encourages married couples to have children. It is against birth control.

Realities of the Population Explosion, The Ensign, May 1971, p. 18

The turn

There was no announcement, no conference address marking a change, and no revelation published. The teaching moved the way most modern church teaching moves: the handbook was quietly rewritten, and the emphasis in conference talks shifted underneath it. By 1998 the handbook language had become the couple's decision, and by 2011 an apostle was saying it from the pulpit as though it had never been otherwise:

When to have a child and how many children to have are private decisions to be made between a husband and wife and the Lord.

Neil L. Andersen, Children, General Conference, October 2011

Where it stands

The church's current published position is one sentence, and it removes the church from the decision entirely:

Decisions about birth control and the consequences of those decisions rest solely with each married couple.

Birth Control, Gospel Topics

One piece of the old counsel survives, and it is narrow. Surgical sterilization is treated differently from contraception:

The Church continues to discourage surgical sterilization as an elective form of birth control.

Significant Updates Made to Five Chapters of the General Handbook, Church Newsroom, July 2020

So a Latter-day Saint asking this question in 2026 gets a genuinely different answer than their grandparents did, from the same institution, with no event in between to point at. Every document quoted here is indexed in this library — the 1958 entry, the conference talks, the magazine, and the current handbook — which means you can read the change rather than take anyone's word for it.