Utah midwife sentenced to jail in rare criminal case

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah midwife convicted in the death of a premature twin baby marks a rare criminal case that comes as out-of-hospital births grow in popularity in the U.S. and more states move to license midwives.
The Spectrum newspaper in St. George reports that 57-year-old Vickie Sorensen was sentenced to six months in jail Tuesday for manslaughter by a judge who called it one of the most difficult cases he’d seen.
Prosecutors say the lay midwife in in Cedar City treated the baby with outdated techniques and too-large equipment rather than going to the hospital immediately after he was born purple and struggling to breathe in 2012.
Sorensen says she delivered thousands of healthy babies, including twins, safely over the years, but snowy roads later kept her from reaching the hospital.