"Domestic violence shelter directors say the state is increasingly taking children away from women who have done nothing more than move to a shelter to escape a violent home...

...Thomas said the domestic violence professionals on her staff agreed that the Cabinet removals were appropriate in only about five of the 50 cases, in which mothers had other problems, such as drug addiction, in addition to domestic violence.

Thomas said she knows of three cases in the 17-county area in which the state found new adoptive families for infants who were taken from domestic violence victims at the hospital immediately after birth."