This is a purely hypothetical situation. Obviously we are not able to effectively control everyone's fertility at the moment, but its an interesting idea nonetheless. If we could control everyone's ability to have babies, should we? Or do people have natural rights to children? Also, what do you think such a licence would require?

Some people may argue that people have natural rights to the manipulation of their bodies as long as they don't harm others. At face value, this would include having sex and giving birth. But if you dig deeper, giving birth can have potentially devastating affects on others. For example, if an uneducated crackhead, gang member, etc has a child, the child will likely be similar to the parent [citation needed], causing more harm than benefit to the overall society. In a way, this does affect other people.

In theory, if there was a licence that was a good predictor of "good" potential parents and could be effectively enforced, should it be implemented in society? And where should the line be placed? Most would agree that people with destructive behavior should not have children (considering there's already services out there for that very purpose). But how far should it go? To criminals? The uneducated? People with mental disabilities? People with low intelligence?

No, that's eugenics.
Nature can take care of self-destructive people on it's own.

You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.

No. Stop subsidizing bad decisions and everything else takes care of itself.

Yes.

I have seen too many dysfunctional people get knocked up and spawn more dysfunctional people.

When you let just anyone be a parent, you end up with children getting raised by neglectful, stupid, immature, drug-addicted, criminal parents,  which not only fucks over the child, but puts a burden on society because many of these kids will wind up as bad as their parents due to their upbringing.

The world is overpopulated already; we don't need to inflate our numbers further with non-productive individuals.

It sounds harsh, but some people shouldn't breed.

No, but we need to stop giving out rewards for reproducing. It shouldn't be a path littered with incentives. We no longer NEED people to reproduce, so why are we essentially paying people to do just that? If anything, we need to start handing out tax penalties for people who have a lot of kids, though that would probably never fly. People might have a "right" to reproduce (as fictional as that really is) but they don't have a right to get government funding for it.

No purely on the basis of what would we do with the babies that were illegally created.

What will be the penalty? if she gets pregnant without license.

Well its definitely a possibility in the future for reducing or preventing overpopulation. China has a 1 child law which has really reduced their expansion.

Sounds like something off an Orwellian nighmare.

Dammit guys, the thing was a warning, not a manual! Meanwhile I'll left you with these lyrics:

http://www.songlyrics.com/arjen-lucassen/parental-procreation-permit-lyrics/

Oh, and have I mentioned it would potentially qualify as genocide and violate some of the most basic human rights laid down when the ONU was founded?

Yeah. The enthusiastic young internet populace at it again...