Planned or not: Why did Padme get pregnant?

Before you post an answer, read the question carefully! I'm wondering why Padme got pregnant - not how. I know as well as anyone that babies are grown in a cabbage patch and delivered to the mother's door via stork.

As far as I can tell, RotS does not even hint at why Padme got pregnant. Was it planned or not? If it was, why? Anakin seems shocked and surprised when Padme gives him the news, but I suppose the meaning of his reaction is debatable. The way I see it, there are several possibilities:

1. Padme and Anakin wanted to get pregnant. Given that they were in the middle of a war, this doesn't seem an ideal time to bring a child into the world. Since no one knew Padme was married, her pregnancy would have caused great scandal and possibly cost her her position as Senator. Especially if it became known that a Jedi was the father. And if Anakin were revealed as the father (it was known they were good friends - Obi-Wan at the very least was able to jump to the right conclusion immediately), he would certainly have been expelled from the Order, causing the Army of the Republic to lose its best warrior and the Jedi Order to lose their Chosen One destined to destroy the Sith. I just can't imagine Anakin and Padme would be so reckless as to try to get pregnant at a time like that, knowing what was at stake. Padme definitely was more responsible than that.

2. Padme stopped taking birth control without telling Anakin, or Anakin sabotaged her birth control without telling her. Either possibility seems a bit ludicrous to me, for all the reasons listed above.

3. The birth control failed. Given that in the GFFA, people can be cloned, or turned into 90% cyborgs and survive, or have devastating injuries healed with a dunk in a bacta tank, etc., surely they also invented reliable birth control?

4. It was the will of the Force. The Force knew Anakin was going to turn to the Dark Side, and so it ensured the creation of offspring who could undo the damage when they got old enough. In some ways this answer makes the most sense to me, but it feels a bit like a "magic button" solution. If the Force had the power and the inclination to do something like that, it could have just given Sideous a brain aneurysm - problem solved. Besides, something in me rebels against the idea of Padme and Anakin being "forced" to become parents against their will. Pun intended.

5. The Sith sabotaged the birth control. Sideous sent someone to break into Padme's apartment to replace the pills with a placebo, knowing that a pregnancy could get Anakin kicked out of the Order and therefore be more open to joining the Sith. Or maybe Sideous could foresee the possibility of Padme dying in childbirth and knew Anakin would go berserk and join the Dark Side in an effort to save her. This possibility seems a bit... icky... to me. Why would Sideous be so foolish as to do this, when he knows that "if Anakin were to have any offspring, they could be a threat"? And I don't like the idea of Luke and Leia being "created" by the Sith.

What are your thoughts? Are there any other possibilities I haven't thought of?

Apologies if this has been discussed before. I searched through the archives and didn't find anything helpful. It just seems like a critical question to me, and the answer would reveal a lot about Anakin and Padme's characters.

 

It could be a combo of the will of the Force (since Anakin's weakness is family and relationships, doesn't it make sense for the Force to take advatage of this and give him more weaknesses?) and a failure of bc. Not every medicine can be 100% effective (even more so with such a forcefully (pun intended) person on one side) and had she taken it at the wrong time, the pills expired, missed a day or a lot of other things that could have messed up the effectness of the drug.

 

Option four seems the most sensible to me, but that might be because it doesn't involve any chance or character interaction. I don't like the idea of Sith intervention because I would rather believe Palpatine predicted the birth and used it to turn Anakin.

 

My first inclination is option 1, but I could see option 4 as a possibility as well.

I definitely do not think Luke and Leia were planned. I had always assumed that Anakin was on leave for a day or two from the war and they had passionate sex without thinking about birth control. Or there could have been a birth control failure--the GFFA, for all its technology, did not seem to have adequate technology to discover the presence of twins until Padme got ready to deliver. (Or that was Lucas writing himself into a corner because Anakin/Vader did not know he had a daughter until the throne room scene in ROTJ, so he could not find out in ROTS. Or, Padme was trying to keep a secret and did not seek prenatal care. Anyway...)

I don't think Sidious had anything to do with it, or he would have hunted down the twins, or at least Luke, long before the OT.

All that being said, there was a joke going around among several of us Anakin fans/A-P shippers when the first images from the nightmare scene came out. "Now we know why Padme got pregnant..."

 

I have to go with this option.
It's all "Yo Paddy! I might die in this battle - let's secks?"
And I DEFINATELY AGREE ON THE END.
BRB MAKING SPOOF POSTER FOR KNOCKED UP.

 

That ol' Palpatine. He'll engineer wars, backstab his generals, and stick pins in your diaphragm.

Seriously though: Is anyone else finding it difficult to wrap their heads around the concept of birth control in the Star Wars universe?

 

SW birth control made easy:

"There is a small thermal exhaust port right below the main port."

"Hey! Point that thing someplace else!"

"Deh bosses would do terrible tings to me, TERRRRIBBLE tings to me if me going back dere!"

"Look at the size of that thing!"

"No, wait! They'll hear!"

"Hang ON back there!"

"You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought."

 

I LAUGHED AT THE ENTIRE THING.

 

Let's consider the situation:

Due to the ongoing Clone Wars, Anakin was forced to be away from Coruscant for months at a time. Given that, it is understandable that at one time, Padme was so excited for Anakin's return, that she neglected to take her birth control pills (if that's even the method that's used in the GFFA).

 

You missed one:

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

--"It might!"

What's SW contraception without some SW viagra...

 

In my opinion, it does not matter.

Anakin enjoyed himself making the baby. (Lucky SOB) That's all that matters.

 

Birth control wouldn't have mattered. Anakin's sperm is rich with midichlorians, and would have completed their mission regardless.

 

I know Family Guy already did it, but that would make a GREAT episode of TCW...

 

I figure they just had unprotected sex in the heat of the moment. That's all.

badabing, badaboom

 

I think Anakin and Padme made Leia, and the Force itself popped Luke in there, as a mulligan for the Chosen One prophecy.

 

Padmè & Anakin wanted babies but they certainly didn't planned the pregnancy at that moment in time for obvious reasons...it just happened.

PRICELESS!

 

A better question is why Anakin thought Padme would just die in childbirth. They live in a futuristic society with ridiculous advances in medical care. Surely childbearing fatalities would be an extraordinarily rare occurrence.

As for the original question, I suspect Padme stopped taking birth control. Anakin being surprised pretty much indicates he wasn't the one who screwed up in that department knowingly. Even then, birth control can fail, so it wouldn't be surprising if she unwittingly became pregnant.

 

As a matter of fact, I am too! It just seems oddly out-of-universe, although I can't explain why. One thing I keep thinking, though: if we have, here on planet Earth, forms of birth control where you don't have to remember to take a pill (i.e. dermal patches and IUDs), why wouldn't they have those things in a GFFA?

I'm beginning to see why the filmmakers just dodged the question entirely, but I would really like to be able to answer this question to my own satisfaction in a fanfic I am working on.

I've wondered about that too. Why didn't he insist she take an EmDee with her everywhere she went?

 

Padme got pregnant because otherwise the bank wouldn't grand the mortgage...

 

I don't think that his problem was the birth itself, but the fact that his visions about his mother had been proven correct in AOTC...

So, he was afraid that his visions would be anyhow proven correct again...

 

The thought of the sith messing with peoples birth controle is interesting. We all know thell blow up a planet but sabotaging someones birth control well thats the line. what jerks.

 

Has it been confirmed that birth control is practiced in the STAR WARS universe? As for the pregnancy, I think it simply happened.

 

Are you kidding me? With all those midis floating around in his bloodstream; quite frankly, I'm shocked that she didn't become prego after the first kiss....

 

^

Me too! And the fact that they only had twins in 3 years of marriage which is why I believe in the Force theory as well!

 

I believe that it was an accident....Coz, as it was writen before, Padme had a job at the senate, nobody knew that she was pregnant and her pregnancy would be considered a scandal. Anakin was surprised about the news and she was anxious.

My story of how it might have happened:
Anakin returned to Padme after a long period of time and he was going to leave again the next day.... in their passion they forgot to use protection .
The next day, Padme was overwhelmed by Anakin's departure and she forgot the after-day's pill
thats the true story...