Some legal experts are warning that spousal abuse laws are having unintended consequences. Prosecutors are going after husbands who may only have tried to restrain their wives during a domestic dispute. And some law enforcement authorities say the laws force them to prosecute, even if a wife takes her husband's side and refuses to file charges.

Moreover, research shows that spousal abuse is far less common than activists for battered women contend.

• Data from the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that less than 1 percent of women's emergency-room visits are due to assaults by male partners.

• About ten times as many women are injured in auto accidents as are victims of spousal abuse.

• Pamphlets distributed by family violence programs stress that one doesn't have to be hit to be abused and broaden the definition of abuse to include "calling you names," "criticizing you for small things," or "making you feel bad about yourself."

• Many states and jurisdictions now mandate arrests in cases of domestic disputes.

A former prosecutor in Hamilton County, Ohio, estimates that a state law requiring police responding to a domestic call either to make an arrest or file a report why no arrest was made increased his docket of domestic cases from 10 percent to 40 percent of all cases. He says that push-and-shove cases and yelling matches are making criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

Mandatory arrest laws have also led to a rise in the number of women being arrested for domestic assault. In some states, women now account for one-quarter of all such arrests.

In Massachusetts, less than half of the 60,000 restraining orders issued in domestic abuse cases annually involve an allegation of physical abuse.