1.   The application was based on a sworn statement from a lay midwife who said she attended his birth in La Paloma.

2.   A fairly small group of professional lay midwives who are not nurses are trained in midwifery through apprenticeships, and do mostly home deliveries.

3.   Advocates for lay midwives argued that state officials were in effect seeking to ban home births by restricting midwifery to nurses.

4.   Charges against Donna Vidam, a lay midwife from East Hartford whose case resulted in the ruling, were the first brought by Connecticut.

5.   In California, licensing was opened to lay midwives this year by recognizing other education besides nursing.

6.   It offers, instead, its own national standards that it says will assure women and doctors that lay midwives are properly trained.

7.   Ms. Polan said that Ms. Vidam and other lay midwives would welcome a law that would regulate lay midwifery without prohibiting it.

8.   National training standards for lay midwives set by the North American Registry of Midwives reflect the focus on home birth.

9.   Ms. Vidam, a massage thewho trawifrentdge fi contnsing law for nurse-midwives does not prohibit lay midwives like herself from practicing.

10.   Professional lay midwives earn significantly less.