Strangers.

Last week as I was returning very early from a convenience store, I caught a glimpse of this woman, all heavy with a child walking with a wooden cane in the area about their house.

Then again another morning, I saw the same woman lying on a hammock hanging in a big tree in their front yard. These folks are not homeowners in the residential village - but illegal settlers - whose families lived in the area long before the subdivision was built.

Then over the start of the week, we heard that the woman died. And with her demise, the full term baby in her womb died, too. But according to the neighbourhood seamstress who repairs my pants, and who brought the news to our attention, the baby was apparently healthy, but the doctors were not able to save him.

Now, there's a huge post hanging in the rusted corrugated fence iron- courtesy of the funeral parlour overseeing the woman's burial. It says "in memory of the mother and baby boy."

I'd never seen this woman before. We learned later on that she had two other children. And the hearth breaking information that she took a bunch of Buscopan pills to relieve a stomach pain, just before she died.

Wasn't she aware that pain relievers and other medicines could be hazardous to her pregnancy and the health of the baby in her womb? Wasn't she suspicious that the stomach pain could be pre-labour pain?

I thought about this troubling scenario as I read again about the RH Bill and seen parts of a TV show debate about it. The woman in the real story is married to a labourer, with two other kids, and from what I saw and heard, lived a decent life.

I could only surmise that what caused her early demise was lack of proper health and pregnancy information. Which she could have easily obtained from any of the City's numerous health centres. Even at the local Parish which hosts a weekly health centre for free.

The RH Bill bats for the protection of the woman's health. It also encourages use of condoms and birth control pills, and other devices to prevent pregnancies. It wants sex education taught to grade V students. It promises to incarcerate those who would not help women and teens gain access to these systems.

Senator Lacson even wants to cap Philippine family size to two children, one more than the legal size in China whose population is more than a billion, and whose economy is continuously shooting farther than the West because of good management and leadership.

Instead of educating poor families and teens on how to have safe sex and on how not to get pregnant, why not teach those already married and pregnant how to take care of their pregnancies?

The woman in the real story obviously wanted to have a third child, but she didn't know the dangers of modern drugs. Instead of providing free condoms and IUDs, why not give regular health seminars to the poor? A mobile health centre that goes deep into the rural areas, into illegal settlers' quarters?

The church-based health centres and volunteers who oppose the RH Bill are the ones leading the campaign for better health services for the under privileged. My own sister and bro in law had donated a health centre in a rural area in Nueva Ecija and they are both active in their Seattle, Washington parish and in regular medical missions to the Philippines. And they are AGAINST the RH Bill, having seen the dangers of artificial birth controls and the rise of abortions, and sexually transmitted diseases because of the false safety these devices give.

The woman in the neighbourhood, although poor by society's standard, lived a decent life. Her husband works regularly to tend for his family's needs. They live within the confines of rusted corrugated fence iron, but they survived, and will.