Vermont this week became the fourth state to allow physician-assisted suicide. It is already legal in Oregon, Washington state, and Montana. Vermont’s Catholic bishop denounced the new law, saying it creates a “death state” where, he said, life can be terminated now at both its beginning and its end.

A Philadelphia couple has been charged with murder in the death of their eight-month-old son, who died after they chose to pray instead of seeking medical treatment for the infant. The baby was suffering from pneumonia. This was the couple’s second child to die from lack of medical care. The two were already on probation for the 2009 death of their two-year-old, also from pneumonia.