  We discuss the effects of a magnetic field applied parallel to the Cu-O
($ab$) plane of the high $T_c$ cuprate superconductors. After briefly reviewing
the Zeeman effect of the field, we study the orbital effects, using the
Lawrence-Doniach model for layered superconductors as a guide to the physics.
We argue that the orbital effect is qualitatively different for in-plane and
inter-layer mechanisms for superconductivity. In the case of in-plane
mechanisms, interlayer couplings may be modeled as a weak interlayer Josephson
coupling, whose effects disappear as $H\to\infty$; in this case Zeeman
dominates the effect of the field. In contrast, in the inter-layer mechanism
the Josephson coupling {\em is} the driving force of superconductivity, and we
argue that the in-plane field suppresses superconductivity and provides an
upper bound for $H_{c2}$ which we estimate very crudely.
