U.S. CODE

U.S. Code

§ 5106g. Definitions

For purposes of this subchapter—

(1) the term “child” means a person who has not attained the lesser of—

(A) the age of 18; or

(B) except in the case of sexual abuse, the age specified by the child protection law of the State in which the child resides;

(2) the term “child abuse and neglect” means, at a minimum, any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm;

(3) the term “Secretary” means the Secretary of Health and Human Services;

(4) the term “sexual abuse” includes—

(A) the employment, use, persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion of any child to engage in, or assist any other person to engage in, any sexually explicit conduct or simulation of such conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct; or

(B) the rape, and in cases of caretaker or inter-familial relationships, statutory rape, molestation, prostitution, or other form of sexual exploitation of children, or incest with children;

(5) the term “State” means each of the several States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands;

(6) the term “withholding of medically indicated treatment” means the failure to respond to the infant’s life-threatening conditions by providing treatment (including appropriate nutrition, hydration, and medication) which, in the treating physician’s or physicians’ reasonable medical judgment, will be most likely to be effective in ameliorating or correcting all such conditions, except that the term does not include the failure to provide treatment (other than appropriate nutrition, hydration, or medication) to an infant when, in the treating physician’s or physicians’ reasonable medical judgment—

(A) the infant is chronically and irreversibly comatose;

(B) the provision of such treatment would—

(i) merely prolong dying;

(ii) not be effective in ameliorating or correcting all of the infant’s life-threatening conditions; or

(iii) otherwise be futile in terms of the survival of the infant; or

(C) the provision of such treatment would be virtually futile in terms of the survival of the infant and the treatment itself under such circumstances would be inhumane.

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