Why Doesn’t the Duggar Family Use Birth Control? No Pill View Stems From a Miscarriage

Why Doesn’t the Duggar Family Use Birth Control? No Pill View Stems From a Miscarriage
Jim Bob Duggar, top left, watches as his twin sons, Jedidiah and Jeremiah, both 9, Jordyn-Grace Makiya and mother, Michelle, pose for a photo taken by Josiah, right, 12, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2008, in Rogers, Ark. Jordyn-Grace Makiya is the 18th child born into the Duggar family on Dec. 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Beth Hall)
Zachary Stieber
9/16/2014
Updated:
9/18/2014

The Duggar family is growing bigger and bigger with Jill recently married and already pregnant and Jessa engaged and close to her wedding.

Fans and critics of the show wonder why the family doesn’t use birth control, a fact that it makes no attempt to hide.

Apparently Jim Bob and Michelle first through that they would have only two or three children, and Michelle started the marriage on the birth control pill. The couple says on their website that they wanted to plan when they would have the children.

“After three years, Michelle went off the pill and we had our first son Josh. We loved being Josh’s parents and getting to spend all our time with him, but we didn’t think we were ready for more children yet. So Michelle went back on birth control pills after Josh was born,” they say.

But then Michelle got pregnant despite taking the pill and she miscarried.

“When the doctor told us the miscarriage probably happened because she had conceived while still on the pill, we were devastated. To us, it meant that something we had chosen to do—use the pill—had caused the end of the pregnancy,” the couple says.

“As conservative Christians, we believe every life is sacred, even the life of the unborn. Due to our lack of knowledge, we destroyed the precious life of our unborn child. We prayed and studied the Bible and found a host of references that told us God considered children a gift, a blessing, and a reward. Yet we had considered having another child an inconvenience during that busy time in our lives, and we had taken steps to prevent it from happening.”

The couple decided to stop using the pill and started having a lot of children.

Michelle currently has 19 children, including Josie, the youngest at four years old. The eldest child Josh, with his wife Anna, have three children. And now Jill is pregnant with her first child.

Jill told Us Weekly that she and her husband Derick Dillard want “as many kids as God will give us.”

“My parents have kept popping them out so we'll see how [our] fertility is!” she said. Jill was pregnant about 30 days after her marriage.

There’s no word on whether Jessa is planning on getting pregnant soon after her marriage to Ben Seewald, but some fans of the show have suggested that she won’t be pregnant for a while as she is more independent than her older sister.