How can religious folk be so heartless?

WILL BATTS CAN’T get the phone call out of his mind.

The voice sounded like a teenage boy who wanted to come in for the weekly HIV testing at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, the only such after-hours free testing in town.

But there’d be no testing that night. In December with no explanation, the state took away the $150,000 grant used for HIV and syphilis testing from Planned Parenthood of Greater Memphis, which funded the testing at the center.

Welcome to the latest skirmish in a national battle to obliterate Planned Parenthood, waged by the religious right and conservative Republicans.

Caught in the middle is the young man Batts talked to and eight others turned away for HIV testing that Wednesday, Feb. 8.

Batts, the center’s executive director, told the young man to watch the center’s Facebook page for the latest news. He told the caller that the testing would return. It did the following Wednesday, thanks to the Community HIV Network.

Still, Batts worries about that kid. “It was disturbing to me because he said, ‘This is the only place I can go. I’m in school all day.’ ”

“I understand there’s another piece of Planned Parenthood, but that wasn’t a part of what we do.”

Only three percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion services, but to stop women from exercising that stilllegal choice, the religious right will put at risk women’s health, STD testing and even, as we learned most recently, breast cancer screenings.

After a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate with a stated mission of de -funding Planned Parenthood joined the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization, Planned Parenthood was stripped of $680,000 in grants that had paid for breast cancer screening for poor women.

After the Internet nearly exploded from women’s anger, Komen hastily reinstated the funds.

While Planned Parenthood raised a stunning $3 million for its breast cancer programs following the flap, Komen will never recover from the resulting public relations nightmare.

Closer to home, Planned Parenthood is still reeling.

Last year, it lost $397,000 in Title X family planning services when the Shelby County Commission gave the money instead to Christ Community Health Services, a wellintentioned conservative religious health organization.

When politics and religion seep into what should be simple matters of public health, it’s the most vulnerable among us —

including the poor and those marginalized in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities — who suffer.

“When something happens to one of us, it affects all of us,” Batts said, just after a state legislative subcommittee approved the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which could limit teachers’ ability to stop anti-gay bullying since they couldn’t mention anything but “natural human reproduction science” to elementary and middle school students.

For the foreseeable future and certainly while Planned Parenthood sues to have the state grant restored, the center will lean on a partnership between it and the Community Health Network of Methodist Hospital to continue testing.

But the larger issue remains unanswered.

Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, promised while running for office to de -fund Planned Parenthood and it’s a promise he’s kept.

All of the Republican presidential contenders are anti- choice; if elected, Rick Santorum has said he’d start a national conversation on the “dangers of contraception in this country.”

That people who claim to be Christians could be so callous is disappointing but increasingly predictable.

You don’t have to be pro - choice or fond of gay people to concede that they deserve the health care they need. You only need to have a heart.

Contact Wendi C. Thomas at (901) 529-5896 or e-mail thomasw@commercialappeal.com.