Balkin on the Politics of Roe

Yale law prof Jack Balkin gave an interview to PBS for the Frontline special on abortion.  Here's an excerpt:

Everybody now understands that between the two major political parties, the Republican Party is more pro-life, and there are many more pro-life people in the Republican Party. And yet the Republican Party and Republican politicians, including President Bush, really don't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. They'd like to see it narrowed. They'd like to see it made practically irrelevant in American life, but they don't want to overturn it.

Why is that? It's because American political parties are coalitions of people of very different views. The Republican coalition consists of business conservatives, suburbanites, women who are in suburbs and rural areas, libertarians who believe that the government should stay out of people's private lives, and religious and social conservatives. As long as the right to abortion is more or less protected in the United States, a lot of those people can happily stay in the Republican coalition. Libertarians can stay. Business conservatives can stay. Suburban women and rural women can stay, because they figure, basically, you can get an abortion if you need to; if you can scrape the money together, you can get an abortion.

On the other hand, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, then everything is on the table, including criminalization of abortion. And at that point, libertarians, business conservatives and lots of suburban and rural women and women in urban areas, too, will say to themselves, "I'm not sure I want to be in a party that supports criminalizing abortion." At that point, they will find the Democratic Party more attractive. And not all that many people have to bolt the Republican Party for them to lose control of Congress and the presidency, just a relatively small number. And the Republicans understand that. That's why the Republican strategy is to narrow Roe, cut back at it, weed away at it, but never officially overrule it. . . .

Assuming Balkin's perspective is accurate, can a Catholic who believes that Republican political success on a whole range of issues is more in keeping with the moral anthropology than the Democratic alternatives embrace this strategy?  If there were a choice between nominating Justice X who will vote to overrule Roe and Justice Y who will vote to narrow it but never to overrule it (and their views and qualifications are otherwise equivalent), can a faithful Catholic favor the latter given the collateral political considerations?

Rob