All right, a potentially touchy subject, but one I think I can handle in a nonexplosive fashion. Also, I am sorry once again for accidentally deleting the post on this before I could reply to it.
Although it really makes the unknown child storyline a _lot_ more difficult to plot, I'll admit that contraception in the B7 future is likely about as close to 100% effective as we're going to see.
I would guess most of the women have either a medical implant that time releases a contraceptive or some kind of more direct device blocking the fallopian tubes. A chemical/hormone based implant might be a better argument since it might allow be fixed to allow the women to avoid certain, monthly inconveniences.
Cally, who comes from a world that relies completely on artificial reproduction, could actually have some biologic (whether artificial in origin or not) protection. I mean, there hasn't been a child on Auron born outside a natural womb (wait, being taken outside the artificial womg would _be_ being born . . . ) in about a generation. Although, they seem a reasonable enough people to have some kind of back up for emergencies. So, I'd guess Cally is normally (for lack of a better word) sterile without articial intervention, but that intervention is probably not too complex (injection of a single [but unlikely to be encountered by accident] chemical or some such).
Jenna, being shipped to a penal colony with limited medical resources and with a major male/female direprency _and_ low population, may have been deprived of standard protections as a matter of course (or, if they relied on medical implants, supplied with only enough to last the voyage).
Given the strange environments the crew travels to - complete with an odd assortment of mad scientists and somewhat irrational doctors - it seems likely breakdowns in the system seem more likely to occur and (given its assumed nature) to occur without the women necessarily knowing.
Whew. Think I did that OK.
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