It looks like there's a story behind the thoughts of a Phoenix mother who admitted to killing her 6-day-old girl because she "had too many kids already."
Perhaps it's what that mother, Nina Koistinen, learned at the Laestadian Lutheran "Church" -- some would reach for the word cult -- which people familiar with it say condemns any and all birth control, to the point of promoting the birthing of more and more children.
See also:
-Nina Koistinen Says She Killed Her Baby Because She "Had Too Many Kids Already"
-Nina Koistinen, Accused of Killing Baby, Was the "Greatest Mother," Husband Says
A former church member posted a sermon from a pastor at the church, which is in Cave Creek, explaining the birth-control situation.
"Even the enemy may raise doubts in our minds," pastor Eric Jurmu says. "He may even then, during those busy times of life, come with this kind of sermon, that you know, there are ways, there are ways that you cannot have children, that there are ways that you control the number of children you have. There have been these kinds of occasions where the enemy has tempted some with practicing birth control. It is not according to God's word. It is not according to the teachings of God's kingdom."
Comments on our original post on Koistinen provide apparent firsthand accounts of how seriously this is taken, and how female members are expected to keep having children.
"Those of us with Laestadian backgrounds know why a mother with mental illness continues to have children and why a father aware of his wife's mental illness would not use birth control," the former Laestadian writes.
Pastor Jurmu didn't really back down from that when talking to KPHO.
"[God] gave her all the children she could bear," he said. "And if she couldn't handle more kids, God would've closed her womb."
He's talking about a woman who said she killed her ninth child, a 6-day-old girl named Maya, because she "had too many kids already," according to police.
According to police, Koistinen's husband found Maya unresponsive inside their home, near 56th Street and Thunderbird Road, on the morning of April 8.
Maya was pronounced dead that morning at a hospital.
According to court documents, "possible signs of suffocation" were discovered during an autopsy, and police dug up the CPS records on Koistinen.
In addition to her comment about killing her kids in a car crash, she also talked about "wanting to smother some of her children," according to the documents.
"During the interview, Nina admitted she smothered Maya because she thought she had too many kids already and she was jealous of the attention [her husband] was giving baby Maya," a probable-cause statement says. "The father . . . was put in the interview room with Nina and she admitted to him that she pinched Maya's nose, twisted, suffocated, and smothered baby Maya."
Interestingly, this past Sunday's sermon (which was posted online) had a part about jealousy in the household, between family members.
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