The most important thing we do in life requires no test, no training, not even a certificate of sanity.

When you buy a car, it's a very straightforward business deal. You put down your money, transfer the title, make sure you have insurance. And that's it. It's understood, of course, that you can't drive it unless you have a license that you got after taking a driving test and paying a fee.

But suppose you want to have a child? A much more risky and problematic, and long-ranging deal than buying a car, right? I mean, you can't unload a troubled child like you would a bothersome car. If things are bad enough, you can abandon a balky clunker of a car, but you can never walk away from your own children, however irritating they are. Actually, you can -- and too many people do -- but it's obviously wrong. After all, you brought them into the world -- they had no vote -- and so you're responsible for them until they're grown. What's that you say? You can't support them any more? Can't even buy them food? Well, why didn't you think about that before you had them?

Let's suppose, for ever reason, you decide you want to have even more. Well, here's the good news. Have at it! No background check! No credit check! No essay exam! Go for it, boy and girl! Whoever you are, wherever you come from, if you can breathe and get it up, you're qualified to be a daddy! And any girl you choose, however young, can be your partner! Together you can have another beautiful baby!

Isn't it interesting that the most important thing we do in this life -- bringing others into it and rearing them into responsible adults -- requres absolutely no kind of credentials? Are you fit to raise children? Do you even have a solid relationship with the father/mother? Will you swear on your soul that you'll do your best to provide for this child? Can you spell "commitment"? Do you know what it means?

It's a simple fact of nature that anyone can have a child. There is nothing more amazing in our world than the birth of a child -- and nothing more natural. A new human. More amazing is that that monumentally important function is granted to anyone and everyone, even psychopaths and extreme depressives, abusive mothers and absent fathers. It's the one great democratic right, biologically guaranteed. The right to reproduce. Granted by God, by God. Case closed.

So what can be done to prevent young girls -- and deranged people (not developmentally challenged but outright criminals)-- from having children? Nothing. You knew that. This ability to give birth (maybe to make up for death), is bestowed on the least of us as well as the best of us. Anybody can impregnate, and anyone can give birth. A God-given right, right?

I guess all we can do is try to educate our own young, to counsel them about the awesome responsibilities of parenthood, and hope they listen, while all the time knowing that there are lots of mothers and fathers who aren't going to be doing that kind of counseling and who are going to be exhibiting inappropriate behavior for their kids. There is not one thing we can do about that. Those parents, just by being human, and by being parents, have immunity.

In fact, almost anything you do to your kid short of outright injury -- a broken arm, for instance --is safe-guarded. You can be a totally negligent parent -- not buying your kids new underwear when they need it or leaving them alone because you can't afford an after-school baby sitter -- and no one will say a word against you. (In extreme cases -- and yes, they do exist (in the newspaper almost every day) -- you can secret one or more of your kids in a basement or even some kind of cage. In the privacy of your own home, you can do pretty much anything to your kids that you can do to your pets, short of having them taken to the Humane Society to be "put down". But kids all over the world disappear every day and are never heard of or from again. So if you have children you don't want, it's your right. No one is watching. At least no one who's going to try to stop you.

The only time we, as a society, start watching is, sadly, after something has gone wrong and has been brought to our notice. A child has been starved to death or mysteriously buried or whatever. Someone blows the whistle. Then we move in and do an investigation that shows -- voila! -- that this was a family or a day care center that should never have had any children in it. And that, yes, there were clues -- some that stared us right in the face -- and yes, there were people, from neighbors and family and friends to authorities, who should have done something. Anything. But we/they didn't. And now, as usual, it's too late.

But how do you regulate a natural function: getting pregnant, having kids?

Unfortunately, you don't. You can't. You might as well outlaw eating Cheetos. Hey, we're programmed to eat them. And to have babies. They come whether we decide to have them or not. The only time they don't come is when we consciously do something to prevent it. Like birth control. Or abstinence. Or trying to guess when we shouldn't have sex. But none of those methods can be forced on anyone, and lots of people, men and women alike, don't use any of them. So here come the babies, one after another, tumbling out into a world, a family, that may or may not have wanted them and that may or may not take of them.

As I mentioned in another essay, I wish there were a way to implant something in girls' arms -- or boys' arms -- that would, by default, keep them from getting pregnant. When they met the person of their dreams, they could have it removed -- and get pregnant. I think it would avoid much of the anguish young -- and not so young -- girls have to go through every day. But our society would never allow such an invasion of a person's privacy with regard to reproduction. And of course many of the world's religions forbid any kind of birth control.

No, alas, we seem, as a species, just as doomed as the rest of living creation to keep popping out offspring willy-nilly, with utter abandon.

So until someone devises a universally-accepted standard or test or set of guidelines that would screen out those who really shouldn't have children, all we can do is keep preaching the gospel of good parenthood: Think about it. Plan for it. Commit to it. And all ahead of time!

Of course there are plenty of unwanted children who grow up to be loving, even successful adults, but I'm willing to bet there are a lot more who live short, brutish lives they wouldn't have chosen if given the option.

There is nothing more important we do in life than creating and nurturing new humans. It shouldn't be an accident when it happens. We're smarter than that. We're not ants or rabbits or jackals in the wild. We know how to keep it from happening -- or at least to control when it happens.

And when should it happen? You know the answer to that: when we're ready for it.

If you're not ready, or if you aren't sure if you're ready, don't do it! Not yet.
Tell others you care about the same thing. Make the gospel your own. Spread the word, rather than your seed. Or, not to be too crude, your legs.

Give at least as much consideration to it as you would buying that new car.