Answer
Wa `alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
The issue of having a child, either it is the third or the first, is the right of both the husband and the wife; no one of them is entitled to deprive the other from this basic right of marriage.
Answering your question, Dr. Wael Shehab, PhD in Islamic Studies from Al-Azhar University and currently the Imam of the Downtown Toronto Masjid in Canada, states:
Family issues are to be fixed and settled by means of mutual respect, love, and affection between the husband and his wife.
As for the question of giving birth, it is the right of both the husband and the wife, and neither one of them has the right to deprive the other from doing so.
Also, the wife should approach her husband kindly and wisely to reach good workable solutions to their marital problems. If it is needed, they may go for professional counselors or seek the help of close and influential family members or friends.
It is important to point out that it is prohibited to take any contraceptive measure, which would permanently prevent pregnancy, or cause infertility. It is permissible, however, to use temporary safe birth control methods to delay pregnancy for valid reasons, as in the case of delaying pregnancy for the two years of breastfeeding the baby.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.