Mother with rare cancer registers at Dignitas clinic...
A teenage boy has made a heartfelt plea to his cancerstricken mother for her not to register at the Dignitas assisted suicide clinic.
Katherine Lennard, 55, has signed up to the controversial Swiss centre to end her life if she becomes too ill to care for herself.
But while the 55-year-old’s husband and elder son have backed her decision, the former primary school teacher was told by her other son Tommy, 17, that signing up to the clinic is ‘morally wrong’.
Mrs Lennard, who is campaigning for a change in assisted suicide laws, was told by her younger son: ‘I think it’s morally wrong.’ ‘I don’t think it’s right to end your own life - it feels like giving in. ‘But I do accept that people should have the choice.’
Mrs Lennard, a head of special needs from Belsize Park, North London, was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumours in December 2009.
She has had half her liver and half a lung removed, and although her tumours have been stabilised, she has been told the illness could return at any time.
She told the Camden New Journal: ‘After I signed up to (to Dignitas), there was a sense of relief.
‘I could see more clearly. I dared to climb up the wall, and look over it. I looked at death very hard.
Nobody looks at death until they have to climb that wall. ‘We are all going to die - hands up anyone who dosn’t want a say in it? The arguments against it are pretty thin.
‘I don’t see why my relatives should be involved in the practical act of my death.’ Around 150 Britons have so far gone to the Swiss Dignitas clinic to take their own lives. Mrs Lennard said she wants the freedom to be able to end her own life at home. She has since joined the Dignity in Dying campaign and will attend a meeting in Parliament next month to lobby for change.