In an astonishing interview earlier this month Antonya Cooper admitted on radio to giving her extremely ill son a lethal dose of morphine in 1981, as she endured her own cancer hell
A woman who admitted giving her terminally ill seven-year-old son a lethal dose of morphine to “quietly end his life” has died after her own cancer hell.
Antonya Cooper’s son Hamish had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma in 1979 and had stage 4 cancer when he died in December 1981 following 16 months of “horrendous treatment you wouldn’t put a dog through”.
Police began an investigation last week after Antonya, 77, spoke in a BBC interview of helping her son to die.
Asked if she understood she was potentially admitting murder or manslaughter, she told BBC Radio Oxford: “Yes. If they 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.”
Antonya had terminal breast, liver and pancreatic cancer and backed a change in the law to allow assisted dying. She had also joined Swiss assisted dying clinic, Dignitas.
Her daughter Tabitha said she had died over the weekend “on her own terms”. She said: “She was peaceful, pain-free, at home and surrounded by her loving family.” Tabitha said the family had been visited by police since her mum’s interview.
The Thames Valley force said it was still “making enquiries” despite Antonya’s death.
Speaking about her beloved son’s final moments, Antonya told the BBC: “It was in the middle of the night, we were by his bedside.
“I had been entrusted to the possession of that morphine sulphate. I said, ‘Would you like me to remove the pain?’ He said, ‘Yes please, mama’. Through his Hickman Catheter I gave him a large dose of morphine that did quietly end his life.
“He knew, he knew somewhere what was going on. I was his mother, he loved his mother and I totally loved him. I was not going to let him suffer. It was the right thing to do.”
Antonya had backed making assisted dying legal. She said human death should not be “so intolerably inhumane”, adding: “We don’t do it to our pets, so why should we do it to humans?”
Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Man are considering changing the law to let terminally ill people end their lives.
Critics say it would put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives.
