Rod, Kathryn: I don’t believe Santorum should “get a pass” from conservatives, whatever their religious affiliations. I also think, as everyone here knows, that public officials have a moral obligation to extend legal protections to unborn human beings. That means voting for pro-life bills and against pro-abortion ones. Catholic teaching on these points make it scandalous that politicians who deny justice to the unborn present themselves as Catholics and present themselves for communion.

But it does not follow that voters have a moral obligation always to support pro-life candidates over pro-choice ones, or that Catholic voters do. So, for example, assume a pro-life voter considering an election pitting a pro-life Democrat against a pro-abortion Democrat. If that voter really believed that maintaining the pro-life party in legislative control required the election of the pro-abortion candidate, his support for that candidate would be justified and might even be required. The moral obligation is to the unborn, not to particular candidates. (In most cases, I would strongly dispute that voter’s judgment.)

Or assume a pro-life Democratic politician who always votes the right way on abortion bills but is deadset against the Iraq war–considers it both unjust and a disaster. Could he support a left-wing presidential candidate who promised to end the war but was pro-abortion? He might reason that presidents have more power to end war than they do to end abortion. Now don’t get me wrong: I would vigorously dispute this politician’s prudential judgments. But I could not dispute that these are prudential judgments rather than violations of pro-life principle. (For one thing, the politician would have to take into account that the probability that he is wrong about Iraq is greater than the probability he is wrong about abortion. Also, you would have to ask him if behind his somewhat contrived calculation lurked a failure to take the claims of 1.2 million unborn human beings seriously.)

Back to the question of Santorum. In a very important sense, Republicans shouldn’t be given a pass simply because of their party: As Peter Robinson noted the other day, pro-abortion Republicans who claim to be Catholics must be denied communion as surely as pro-abortion Democrats must. But if Santorum really believed that Specter’s nomination was important for pro-life goals, which is something strongly implied by his public argument for Specter, then he should be criticized for making the wrong judgment rather than failing to uphold public morality or even Catholic teaching.