I found this commentary a bit captivating and thought I would share.  It comes from Nicholas Cafardi, a high profile anti-abortion Catholic legal scholar.

You can read it in its entirety here, but below are some highlights, and it’s the last highlight that I list that continues to stick with me:

• I believe that abortion is an unspeakable evil, yet I support Sen. Barack Obama, who is pro-choice. I do not support him because he is pro-choice, but in spite of it. Is that a proper moral choice for a committed Catholic?
• Despite what some Republicans would like Catholics to believe, the list of what the church calls “intrinsically evil acts” does not begin and end with abortion. In fact, there are many intrinsically evil acts, and a committed Catholic must consider all of them in deciding how to vote.
• Obama’s support for abortion rights has led some to the conclusion that no Catholic can vote for him. That’s a mistake. While I have never swayed in my conviction that abortion is an unspeakable evil, I believe that we have lost the abortion battle — permanently. A vote for Sen. John McCain does not guarantee the end of abortion in America. Not even close.
• Let’s suppose Roe v. Wade were overturned. What would happen? The matter would simply be kicked back to the states — where it was before 1973. Overturning Roe would not abolish abortion. It would just mean that abortion would be legal in some states and illegal in others. The number of abortions would remain unchanged as long as people could travel.
• The right to abortion is guaranteed by the federal judiciary’s interpretation of the Constitution. And while the president appoints federal judges, the connection between a president’s appointments and the decisions rendered by his appointees is tenuous at best. After all, in 1992, five Republican-appointed justices voted to uphold Roe v. Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Yet on other intrinsic evils — an unjust war, torture, ignoring the poor — I can address those evils directly by changing the president.
• There is a difference between being pro-choice and being pro-abortion. Obama supports government action that would reduce the number of abortions, and has consistently said that “we should be doing everything we can to avoid unwanted pregnancies that might even lead somebody to consider having an abortion.” He favors a “comprehensive approach where … we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children.” And he wants to ensure that adoption is an option for women who might otherwise choose abortion.
  Obama worked all of that into his party’s platform this year. By contrast, Republicans actually removed abortion-reduction language from their platform.