Doctrinal Library

Believe, Love, Do

Through the lens of pure love, we see immortal beings of infinite potential and worth and beloved sons and daughters of Almighty God.

The Plan and the Proclamation

It further declares “that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.”

General Conference: Strengthening Faith and Testimony

For example, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” was given long before we experienced the challenges now facing the family.

What Matters Most Is What Lasts Longest

But as your leaders, we call upon members of the Church everywhere to put family first and to identify specific ways to strengthen their individual families.

Our Efforts to Inform the World of Our Doctrines...

here is in that no crime at all, unless some law of God is violated, or somebody is injured in the matter. If this transaction that I have just named violates the law of God, or if it injures or infringes upon the rights of a brother or a sister, then there may be some ground for pronouncing it a crime, but belief in, and practice of, the eternity and plurality of the marriage covenant do not violate the law of God, because He has commanded His people to accept and obey it. Neither is it an infringement upon the rights of others, neither men nor women, but gives all women an opportunity to become honorable wives and mothers, and thus to shut out what is politely called the social evil, with all its horrid concomitants of seduction, feticide, infanticide and all the train of sexual monogamic evils which haunt and infest Christendom.

Temples in Course of Erection—Political Position of the Saints

The standing law of God is, be fruitful and multiply; but these reformers are “swift to shed blood,” even the blood of innocence; and with their prenatal murders and other crimes, are slaying their thousands and tens of thousands with impunity, to say nothing of that other loathsome, disgusting, filthy institution of modern Christendom “the social evil,” as well as other infamous practices. We must protest against feticide, infanticide, and other abominable practices of Christendom being forced upon us, either in the shape of legislative enactment, judicial decision or any other adjunct of so called civilization. We are American citizens and are not yet deprived of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

General Doniphan's Connection with the Early History of the Church...

I heard it stated, or read, not long since, that a hundred thousand infanticides annually occur on Manhattan Island. That is a most horrible state of affairs if it is half true, or quarter true. Can nothing be done to change this system?...
The Lord has blessed us with many children, and there is no Latter-day Saint, who has an abiding faith in the Gospel and in the great command which God first gave to the children of men, to multiply and replenish the earth, but what rejoices in them, and regards them as a blessing from on high...

Conspicuous Position of the Saints...

We are not disposed to imitate these examples, nor to drink in the pernicious doctrine once uttered in Plymouth Church by the noted Henry Ward Beecher—that it was a positive evil to increase families in the land beyond a limited extent, and the ability of the parents to properly educate and maintain them, sustaining the idea of small families; in effect, justifying the mothers—the unnatural mothers—of New England, and their partners who sanction their efforts in destroying their own offspring, and in prevent–ing the fecundity of the race. Fancy such a doctrine justified by the noted orator of the nineteenth century, and reechoed by the smaller fry throughout the country! The Latter-day Saints are taught to reverence the words of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, concerning the multiplication of their species, and are called as His children to multiply and replenish the earth.

Oneness of the Priesthood—Impossibility of Obliterating Mormonism

I have known of lots of women calling for a doctor to destroy their children; and there are many of the women in this enlightened age and in the most popular towns and cities in the Union that take a course to get rid of their children. The whole nation is guilty of it. I am telling the truth. I won’t call it infanticide. You know I am famous for calling things by their names.
I have been taught it, and my wife was taught it in our young days, when she got into the family way, to send for a doctor and get rid of the child, so as to live with me to gratify lust. It is God’s truth, and I know the person that did it. This is depopulating the human species; and the curse of God will come upon that man, and upon that woman, and upon those cursed doctors. There is scarcely one of them that is free from the sin. It is just as common as it is for wheat to grow.
Do we take that course here? No. ...
I will tell you that some of the most noble spirits are waiting with the Father to this day to come forth through the right channel and the right kind of men and women. That is what has to be yet; for there are thousands and millions of spirits waiting to obtain bodies upon this earth.

The Persecutions of the Ancient Saints...

There will be no swearing, no whoredom, there will be no crimes of infanticide or feticide. No such sins will be known among us, our children will be born in honorable wedlock under the ordinances of the holy Priesthood, and not illegitimate, to be denied the privileges of the congregations of Israel, until perhaps the tenth generation according to ancient law.