Mother who ended terminally ill son’s life dies 43 years after

A 77-year-old woman, Antonya Cooper, who confessed to “quietly” ending her son’s life in 1981, has died of cancer, BBC reports Monday.

Cooper had ended the life of her seven-year-old son, Hamish, with a lethal dosage of morphine through his catheter as the boy suffered from stage-4 neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive cancer that affects children.

Her death was disclosed by her daughter, Tabitha, who said, “She was peaceful, pain-free, at home and surrounded by her loving family.

“It was exactly the way she wanted it. She lived life on her terms and she died on her terms.”

Cooper, a native of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England, was said to have died “over the weekend, following a diagnosis of incurable breast, pancreatic and liver cancer,” her family noted.

In an interview with the BBC last week, when asked if she was aware of possibly admitting to manslaughter, she replied, “Yes,” adding that she was ready to “face the consequences,”

She said, “If [the police] come 43 years after I have allowed Hamish to die peacefully, then I would have to face the consequences. But they would have to be quick because I’m dying too.”

Cooper had narrated her late son’s trauma before her act, saying, “I feel very strongly that at the point of Hamish telling me he was in pain, and asking me if I could remove his pain, he knew, he knew somewhere what was going to happen.

“But I cannot obviously tell you why or how, but I was his mother, he loved his mother, and I totally loved him, and I was not going to let him suffer, and I feel he really knew where he was going.”

Cooper said it “was the right thing to do” as her son was “facing the most horrendous suffering and intense pain.”

“I was not going to allow him to go through that. We don’t do it [let them suffer] to our pets. Why should we do it to humans?” she added.

While assisted dying, a complex and highly controversial subject, remains illegal in England, the report noted that Cooper’s action was “an effort to change the law on assisted dying.”

Her daughter recalled that officers from Thames Valley Police had visited the family after the BBC report last Wednesday about Cooper’s confession.

According to the report, recently, “Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man all announced they are considering changing the law to let terminally ill people end their lives.

“One hundred and ninety cases have been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a 15-year period. While most were not taken forward, there have been four successful prosecutions.”

However, while some people have called for the legalisation of the “right to die” so that the vulnerable would be able to choose when and how to die to avoid suffering, others argued that changing the law would “place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives” for fear of being a financial or emotional burden, according to UK-based human rights group – Care Not Killing.

The BBC reported that in 1982 after Hamish’s death, Cooper and her husband Alastair, together with another couple, Janet and Neville Oldridge, who had also lost their five-year-old son Matthew to the same cancer; formed The Neuroblastoma Society, which became Neuroblastoma UK in 2015, to raise awareness and money for research into the disease.

An unnamed spokesperson for the charity said in a statement that “Antonya’s contributions have been invaluable, and her legacy will live on through the vital research we fund.”

Afterwards, Cooper, owing to her traumatic motherhood experience, authored a book, titled, “This is Our Child: How Parents Experience the Medical World.”

However, police authorities said it was “aware of reports relating to an apparent case of assisted dying of a seven-year-old boy in 1981.

“At this early stage, the force is making inquiries into these reports and is not in a position to comment further while these investigations continue.”