Carrie Ann Lucas is confined to a wheelchair. She breathes with the aid of a ventilator. She cannot hear and can see only at close range.

She begins most days about 4 a.m. with newspapers and e-mails. About 5:30, she wakes her three disabled daughters. She and an aide dress the two who use wheelchairs. The girls cannot feed themselves, so Lucas and the aide plug feeding tubes into their bellies. She pours cereal for the one daughter who can eat on her own. She puts the girls on their school buses, the last leaving by 7:10.

Lucas cherishes these mornings, tough as they are, because she knows how hard it is to keep a family together.

She is one of a handful of attorneys in the country whose specialty is representing disabled parents like herself. Her mission: making sure they get the same chance as everyone else to be moms and dads.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 15% of all parents with children in the household have some disability. These parents are far more likely to have the government try to take their children away. Even Lucas lives in fear that social services may seize her children. She knows the sorrow of losing a child — a 7-year-old girl whom she wanted to adopt was taken from her after a difficult court fight.

"I love my kids so much and I love being a parent so much, and I know my [clients] do too," said Lucas, 35, a wisecracking woman who once wrote an essay titled "one of the many joys of crip parenting."

"My clients have fought and fought and fought" to raise their children, she said. Her brassy voice wobbled as her eyes watered behind her tinted glasses. "It’s just discrimination."

Lucas works her cases out of a seventh-floor office at the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition in central Denver. The walls are papered with magazine articles about disabled parents. A bumper sticker in the shape of a shark that reads "Lawyer" is prominently displayed. More disabled people seek help from the coalition than Lucas, who carries about a dozen cases at a time, can handle.

Among those she has worked with was a deaf woman in suburban Denver, whose two toddlers were taken away and put up for adoption after social workers deemed her an unfit mother because she could not hear her children’s cries for attention. Lucas could identify with her — she sleeps with a sound-activated pager that vibrates when one of her daughters calls for her.

She advised attorneys for a wheelchair-bound mother in Montana who fended off requirements from social services that someone who could walk be in the house 24 hours a day if her kids were to live there.

Another client, a blind woman in Denver, was refused treatment at a fertility clinic because the staff there did not think she could be a proper mother. She was asked: "How are you going to drive your kid to soccer practice?" The woman lost: A jury ruled that the clinic had no obligation to treat her.

Still, Lucas readily acknowledges that some disabled people should not be parents. She herself admits that she’s not a perfect parent. "I’m sure there are people who can do a better job than I can," Lucas said. A wealthier mother could afford to stay home with the children, but that wouldn’t be a legitimate reason to take them, she said.

Many of the most popular health food industry products come under significant attack as scientists cast doubt on the benefits of vitamin supplements and low-fat dairy products.

Published research suggests that regular consumption of a wide range of vitamin pills, taken by more than ten million people daily, may actually increase the risk of dying, while eating low-fat dairy products could make it harder for some women to conceive.

Motorists in England face random breath testing under government plans to reduce the toll of deaths and serious injuries from drunk-driving.

Many Ministers believe that giving the police the power to stop any driver, regardless of how they are driving, would be a powerful deterrent.

Research has shown that many drivers exceed the alcohol limit because they believe that they can still drive safely and they know that there is little change of being caught. At present, not only in England but in the US, police can stop only those drivers who have committed a moving traffic violation or those who they suspect have exceeded the limit,

Ever since passing what its Legislature promoted as the nation’s toughest laws against illegal immigration last summer, Colorado has struggled with a labor shortage as migrants fled the state. This week, officials announced a novel solution: Use convicts as farmworkers.

The Department of Corrections hopes to launch a pilot program this month — thought to be the first of its kind — that would contract with more than a dozen farms to provide inmates who will pick melons, onions and peppers.

Crops were left to spoil in the fields after the passage of legislation that required state identification to get government services and allowed police to check suspects’ immigration status.

Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses.

The inmates will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid by the farms. The cost is subject to negotiation, but farmers say they expect to pay more for the inmate labor and its associated costs than for their traditional workers.

Advocates on both sides of the immigration debate said they were stunned by the proposal.

Farmers said they weren’t happy with the solution, but their livelihoods are on the verge of collapse.