Having a child should require a demonstration that the child has the real opportunity for a future, and the real chance to be a positive contributor.

ONE OF the great superstitions of our time is that animals are people too. From the dreamy anthropomorphism of Disney to the midnight raids of animal activists, a belief has sprung that we have an especial responsibility for all sentient non sapiens.

In essence, they are little people – only with horns, hides, trotters and beaks. And instead of being here as a food source or mode of entertainment, our job is to treat them as a kind of disabled kiddy.

In fact, the disconnect is so total in parts of the West that biology lessons, explaining the origin of supermarket meat, are accompanied by health warnings and smelling salts. Every vego and vegan is still recovering from the trauma.

New Zealanders are not immune to such nonsense. Cats and dogs are treated as mini-children, the SPCA thunders its outrage every second week and we are about to liberate mad pigs from their pens. It will end up just like community care – gibbering masses on street corners having incontinence problems.

And we do a special line in outstanding upset whenever any case of animal cruelty hits the courts. Throw a rock at a seal or tie a firework to a cat's tail, and you are immediately labelled a psychopath.

In the Oamaru District Court last week a new wrinkle was added to the old question: what is more important – a human life or that of an animal? On this occasion, the animal won.

Cue Sheryl Santos Teriaki. She is a 19-year-old who has been convicted of a particularly nasty case of animal neglect involving dead, dying and emaciated dogs, over a four-month period.

The district court judge was disposed to send her to jail but took a look at her burgeoning belly and opted for house arrest/community detention instead. Indeed Judge Paul Kellar made it very clear that only the six-month-old in her belly saved her from prison.

But then he did something quite strange. He banned her from owning any kind of dog for the next 10 years. Bad girl.

Yeah, but it gets better, Teriaki has been a very active bad girl. Despite already having a child, she has managed to acquire two other criminal convictions – both from last year. One, for beating up her then partner and a second, for drink-driving. The animal cruelty conviction is her third in 11 months.

Which explains the proximity of prison. And the dog banning.

Yes, but Teriaki is allowed to have a human child. She is deemed unworthy to own a dog but a kid is just fine.

Contrast this with adoption in New Zealand. The adoptive parents are put through a series of excoriating tests to determine whether they would be worthy parents. It is a searching examination of not simply the physical environment that will be provided to any child, but the psychological fitness.

Apply those tests to every child being brought into this world and I'd bet many parents would be a fail. But no, we let everyone breed.

I would like to think that any child that Teriaki turns out will be an educated, empathetic and contributing member of society. A taxpayer, even. But I won't be holding my breath that she won't simply contribute to our feral underclass.

Because Teriaki – and those like her – are provided with an assumption that must be challenged. That everyone has the right to have a child.

If any woman is manifestly unfit, subnormal, drug addicted and destructive then we might tee up Child Youth and Family to wait in the delivery room. But only after the child is born.

Cue another six months pregnant, mum-to-be, 35-year-old Isabelle Kare Brown. You will remember her from last week because her lawyer Tony Bouchier did the unthinkable and petitioned the court for her to be locked up rather than freed. She was living rough, hopelessly addicted to anything, and had been so for years. It is unclear whether she evolved into a feral or was made one.

Two previous children have been removed from her. Of course, CYF put that in a kinder way when responding to the court. Their exact words were "Her history of serious drug abuse, mental health issues and transience means we have grave concerns about the wellbeing of her unborn child."

Yet we still allow Brown and all the other damaged ferals to breed. Indeed, as I have pointed out before, we actively encourage them through our welfare system, our state housing policy, our legal aid programme and endless sympathetic social workers. There comes a stage when a society has the right to protect itself from the bad decisions of others. And of acting when it anticipates harm.

In these excessively libertarian times, our society allows rights to people who should not have them and are not in a position to exercise them responsibly. Which leaves two options. Either we involuntarily sterilise these pathetic wretches. Or we offer financial inducements for them not to have children.

The reality is that having a child should require a test. A demonstration that the child has the real opportunity for a future, and the real chance to be a positive contributor. Instead we work on the opposite tangent: have as many kids as you like. But if you want that dog? Prove yourself.

mlaws@radiolive.co.nz