42 U.S.C. § 5106g : US Code - Section 5106G: Definitions

Search 42 U.S.C. § 5106g : US Code - Section 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.