Following Stenberg v. Carhart, on July 26, 2000, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit made that point explicit in Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer, 2

[Footnote] in the course of striking down New Jersey's partial-birth abortion ban. According to the Third Circuit, under Roe and Carhart, it is `nonsensical' and `based on semantic machinations' and `irrational line-drawing' for a legislature to conclude that an infant's location in relation to his or her mother's body has any relevance in determining whether that infant may be killed. Instead, the Farmer Court repudiated New Jersey's classification of the prohibited procedure as being a `partial birth,' and concluded that a child's status under the law, regardless of the child's location, is dependent upon whether the mother intends to abort the child or to give birth. The Farmer Court stated that, in contrast to an infant whose mother intends to give birth, an infant who is killed during a partial-birth abortion is not entitled to the protections of the law because `[a] woman seeking an abortion is plainly not seeking to give birth.' 3

From the Congressional Report:

The logical implications of Carhart and Farmer are both obvious and disturbing. Under the logic of these decisions, once a child is marked for abortion, it is wholly irrelevant whether that child emerges from the womb as a live baby. That child may still be treated as a non-entity, and would have not the slightest rights under the law--no right to receive medical care, to be sustained in life, or to receive any care at all. And if a child who survives an abortion and is born alive would have no claim to the protections of the law, there would, then, be no basis upon which the government may prohibit an abortionist from completely delivering an infant before killing the infant or leaving the infant to die. The `right to abortion,' under this logic, means nothing less than the right to a dead baby, no matter where the killing takes place.