This horrible news was made worse by two earlier events: the brutal killing by Andrea Yates of her five children, and the nauseating argument made by Susan Kushner Resnick, in which she defends Yates -- reportedly the victim of postpartum syndrome -- under the guise of moral abstention.

Why are so many compassionate, hand-wringing sentimentalists rushing to the defense of people who should have had their reproductive organs removed years ago?

The Yates murders prompted a friend of mine, a quintessential yuppie juggling fatherhood, a profitable business and a marriage, to send me an e-mail in which he sympathizes deeply with Yates. He claims that we are all walking a thin line between sanity and insanity and that sometimes people kill their kids out of love.

Oh yeah, and you, like the rest of this culture, insist on siding with these solipsistic narcissists called modern-day parents who need a good dose of Critical Thinking 101. In an imperfect world, crucial distinctions have to be made. Most of us, even if we walk a fine line between sanity and insanity, do not kill our children. The difference in our fine line lies in the action itself, not the potentiality.

What happened in Yates' case was a crucial lapse in the judgment of those in her inner circle. Few of us ever have the chance to be prognosticators on such a level; they had it and they blew it. Yates' husband, her family and her friends should all be brought in for questioning and charged with failing to provide this woman with a lifetime of birth control pills. Her husband should be castigated for not considering a vasectomy after the second pregnancy.

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I am not a supporter of governmental intrusion into the reproductive lives of human beings, but this tragedy leaves me questioning my deep liberal convictions on many levels. My fondest hope, however, is that this disaster will lead to a national debate on the so-called right to reproduce. We need to probe deeply this absurdly folksy idea that the deep need to have children is simply a call of nature.

Even if it is, so what? Nature beckons us in the direction of a great many urges, such as unbridled rage and anger, reckless sexual licentiousness and gluttony. In the context of our life situations, we judiciously cast many of these callings into the waste bins of depravity where they belong.

Unreflective indulgence into this "need" to reproduce is a narcissistic conceit designed to give meaning to one's life at the expense of innocent children. Oprah is right! Get a dog. It will change your life and, depending on the breed, it need not be too demanding. If it is, you may turn it in to your nearest shelter with a clear conscience and a casual out: "This creature was not what I had in mind."

We have mistakenly taken the allegedly natural human desire to reproduce, which in so many ways is nothing more than old-fashioned tribalism, as a given. It escapes the moral scrutiny of qualifying principles. We do not allow everyone who has a desire to fly a plane, to perform surgery, this automatic freedom. They must satisfy certain conditions and demonstrate competence. They must be qualified. Why? Because, among other things, the consequences of unchecked desires are too great for the rest of us.

"Who are you or I to judge what is a responsible number of children to have?" my friend fires off in his righteous e-mail, smarting, no doubt, from the guilt he feels over whether he has enough bonding time to give his three children. "If five is too many, is three OK? Is one child too many if not raised in a perfect nurturing home?" And on and on he goes, indicting Americans for needing to despise people like Yates.

"Help!" I want to say to someone out there. My conscience as an ethicist pricks me. Do I call some hot line and voice my concern that this average hardworking man may go over the brink soon? He won't go, though. Most people don't; but I will inherit their children in the classroom. As a university professor, I see it all -- grown college students breaking down in my office, sobbing and sobbing. It's all about Mama and Papa and lost love and the evidence that Freud is and has always been right on target.

Order "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood" from the editors of Mothers Who Think.