A woman seeking for assisted suicide to be legalized in the United Kingdom (UK) has admitted to murdering her terminally ill son — and she hopes it will encourage people to support her cause.
Antonya Cooper said her son Hamish had Stage IV cancer, and she gave him a large dose of morphine to kill him in 1981. Hamish was just seven years old. Claiming he was experiencing “horrendous suffering and intense pain” from his “beastly” cancer treatment, Cooper said Hamish wanted to die — but from her own retelling, he didn’t say he wanted her to kill him.
“On Hamish’s last night, when he said he was in a lot of pain, I said: ‘Would you like me to remove the pain?’ and he said: ‘Yes please, mama’,” Cooper, 77, told BBC Radio Oxford. “And through his Hickman Catheter, I gave him a large dose of morphine that did quietly end his life.”
Hamish had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma at the age of five and been given a prognosis of just three months to live. Instead, he had survived for 16 months before his mother killed him. BBC Radio Oxford did ask Cooper if she truly believed Hamish was asking her to die, to which she said yes.
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“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,” she said. “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. It was the right thing to do. My son was facing the most horrendous suffering and intense pain, I was not going to allow him to go through that.”
Cooper acknowledged she had just announced to the world that she murdered her son, and police are now investigating. Cooper herself is now terminally ill as well. “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,” she said.
UK lawmakers are considering legalizing assisted suicide, but an actress and disability advocate is fighting back. Liz Carr released a documentary, “Better Off Dead,” earlier this year, criticizing the push for legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia. “As long as there’s inequality, it is not safe to legalize assisted suicide,” she said on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. “No amount of safeguards will prevent us from mistakes and abuse and coercion; that’s my belief.”
