QUIT TALKING ABOUT ONE WOMAN.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." --10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Bill of Attainder

Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.

The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed."

"The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply - trial by legislature." U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965).

"These clauses of the Constitution are not of the broad, general nature of the Due Process Clause, but refer to rather precise legal terms which had a meaning under English law at the time the Constitution was adopted. A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Such actions were regarded as odious by the framers of the Constitution because it was the traditional role of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment." William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, page 166.

"Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. ... The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community." James Madison, Federalist Number 44, 1788.

Supreme Court cases construing the Bill of Attainder clause include:

* Ex Parte Garland, 4 Wallace 333 (1866).
* Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wallace 277 (1866).
* U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965).
* Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S.425 (1977).
* Selective Service Administration v. Minnesota PIRG, 468 U.S. 841 (1984).

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

How about Scalia’s words from his concurrent opinion in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep't of Health, 497 U.S. 261, where a woman in PVS sought (through her guardians) to terminate her life.

...I would have preferred that we announce, clearly and promptly, that the federal courts have no business in this field; that American law has always accorded the State the power to prevent, by force if necessary, suicide -- including suicide by refusing to take appropriate measures necessary to preserve one's life; that the point at which life becomes "worthless,"...
(snip)
<**2861> The second asserted distinction -- suggested by the recent cases canvassed by the Court concerning the right to refuse treatment, 497 U.S. at 270-277 -- relies on the dichotomy between action and inaction. Suicide, it is said, consists of an affirmative act to end one's life; refusing treatment is not an affirmative act "causing" death, but merely a passive acceptance of the natural process of dying.
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http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/88-1503.ZS.html