A leading American Bishop is urging Catholics to oppose an effort to make ‘assisted dying’ legal in the state of Minnesota.

In an article on the website of Word on Fire, Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron said the proposed law caused him to reflect on a billboard he saw in California when that state was considering legalising assisted suicide in the mid-2010s: “My life, my death, my choice.”

The bishop said the billboard caused him to think of St. Paul’s exhortation to the Romans: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

“Did the billboard get it right, or did St. Paul? Does my life belong to me, or is it a gift from God? Is my death a matter of my personal choice, or is it under God’s providence and at his disposal?” Barron asked.

Barron wrote that the premium placed on bodily autonomy in modern society misses the point that the intentional taking of an innocent life is always wrong, no matter what the perceived benefits may be.