The couple welcomed daughter Bodhi in July.
Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder are defending the way they decided to start a family.
The couple found themselves the subject of controversy after Reed revealed in a recent interview that Somerhalder "threw out all my birth control pills" without her knowledge.
"We decided that we wanted to have children together, and it was just time. But unbeknownst to poor Nikki, she didn't realize that I was going to go in her purse and take out her birth control," Somerhalder said on Dr. Berlin's Informed Pregnancy podcast. "By the way, it was the beginning of the pack, so I had to pop all those suckers out."
After fans criticized the actor for throwing out his wife's birth control behind her back, Reed took to Twitter on Saturday to clarify that it was both of their decisions to start a family.
"To anyone who has been affected by reproductive coercion, we are deeply sorry," she and Somerhalder wrote. "That is an extremely serious issue, and women's rights is something that is incredibly important to both of us. It is something we've been very vocal about, and something that is very close to our hearts."
"We never expect a lighthearted interview we did poking fun at EACH OTHER and how WE chose together to get pregnant, a goofy moment in Barcelona with our two best friends and the anticipation of the start of our journey together as we went from two to three, to turn into something representing a very serious matter," the note continued. "However, if this somehow sheds a light on a topic that definitely needs mainstream attention, then we are grateful for the unintended consequence."
"It's a shame that outlets chose this as their way into a very serious discussion, as we are certainly not qualified to be the faces of this topic," they concluded. "We are two happily married people who chose TOGETHER to have a baby. The end."
Reed and Somerhalder welcomed their daughter Bodhi in July. See more on the couple in the video below.