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Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act
as Amended by the
Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003
SECTION I: CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT ACT
Sec. 111. DEFINITIONS. [42 US.C. 5106g]
[No amendments were made to this section by P.L. 108-36.]
For purposes of this title [42 U.S.C. 5101 et. seq.]—
- the term “child” means a person who has not attained the lesser of—
- the age of 18; or
- except in the case of sexual abuse, the age specified by the
child protection law of the State in which the child resides;
- 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;
- the term “Secretary” means the Secretary of Health and Human
Services;
- the term “sexual abuse” includes—
- 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
- 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;
- 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;
- 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—
- the infant is chronically and irreversibly comatose;
- the provision of such treatment would—
- merely prolong dying;
- not be effective in ameliorating or correcting all of the
infant’s life-threatening conditions; or
- otherwise be futile in terms of the survival of the infant;
or
- 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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