This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

One Sunday, right after my wife and I married, I sat through a Mormon priesthood lesson as the instructor decried the use of birth control. He testified that preventing pregnancy was of the devil.

I went home and told my wife. Although not emotionally or financially ready for a family, we nevertheless tossed our birth control and were pregnant 24 hours later. Nine months after that, we had a daughter.

We struggled a lot in those early years simply because we surrendered a personal decision to someone else. Money was tight, neither of us finished our educations, and it strained our relationship.

Today, I can't complain. Our daughter just graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in social work. We're proud of the amazing woman, mother, and wife she's become.

Still, I resent allowing myself to be "doctrinally coerced" into making a decision that wasn't anyone else's business. Hell, even top LDS leaders would agree that teacher was more than a bit off base.

That's old history, but the ramifications of such intrusive counseling are still with us today, and will be in the future.

Suppose it wasn't just about whether you should plan to have children, but rather what kind? What if you could pick the gender of your baby? Hey, we're not far from the possibility.

If the Second Coming leaves us alone for another 100 years, we might just be able to order a Baby Builder Kit from Amazon.

Husband • "I want a boy, one that won't go bald. Rugged good looks, mechanically inclined. … Oh, and I want a left-hander so he can pitch in the majors."

Wife • "Well, I want a girl, one with perfect teeth and a brain. She has to finish college, so I don't want her ovulating until she's 27."

Bishop • "Now hold on, you two. Let me remind you of what President W. Sonny Dyle said last conference about the evils of pre-birth control."

Monkeying about with genetics is particularly troublesome for Mormons, who believe that gender, personality and assorted other standard features were decided long before we show up here.

What if the baby was female in the pre-existence and you back-ordered a bruiser of a boy? How would that make the baby feel when it was born? Wait, I'm supposed to wear THIS?

And what if you were supposed to have a baby with all sorts of physical problems so as to teach your marriage patience but instead you ordered up a perfect baby with the genetic inclination to play guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughan only without all the cocaine?

Would it be wrong to mess with foreordination like that? Well, actually, maybe not. Who's to say God hasn't already factored that in, specifically the part where it's nobody's business but that of the parents.

This is not to say that baby building wouldn't be problematic. Obviously there are some twisted people out there, most of them in the media or politics. Nobody should be able to order a baby with a bunch of randomly placed eyeballs and a prehensile tail. It might get elected to public office.

Maybe it's not such a good idea, after all. Thanks to evolution, inbreeding and polygamy, we've been messing with birth genetics for a long time now — and see where it's gotten us.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.