In re C.V.

[¶ 15.]What power we wield! We can predict “that there can be no doubt” that a proceeding which never occurred “would accomplish nothing.” Based upon that prediction, we can deny Father his constitutionally guaranteed right to due process without even mentioning the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Nowhere in Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence has it ever been written that the Due Process clause may be ignored because the person denied his rights thereunder was sure to lose anyway.7 In fact, the opposite is true:

[The] State [cannot] refuse to provide natural parents…