The provocative answer to that question, from Elizabeth Scalia at InsideCatholic (the online offshoot of Crisis) is: yes.

Her take:

President George W. Bush is perhaps the most pro-life president we have ever seen, and even when his party held both houses of Congress, his pro-life sensibilities did not translate into an abortion-ending legacy. Still, there is this persistent chugging-along by passionate pro-lifers who earnestly believe that only a pro-life president can meet the case, and they will not vote for a candidate without well-established pro-life bona fides.

As a pro-life Catholic, I am in sympathy with those voters, but only to a point. I’m always grateful to learn that a candidate I like (there have been so few!) is pro-life, but that gratitude has never defined my vote, because I believe — and recent history bears it out — that a president’s sentiments can only take an action so far.

If a pro-life president cannot successfully overturn Roe v. Wade, can a “pro-choice” president ever manage it? Yes, possibly. It depends on what motivates the “choice” part of a candidate’s position.

We’re accustomed to Catholic politicians standing before us — in varying states of grace, of which we can never truly judge — and droning a standard equivocation: “I am personally opposed to abortion but . . . rights of others . . . the law . . . blah blah mush mush, next subject, please.” But which one of them really means what he is saying about the law, and which is simply going through the motions? The one who means it may be the one to reverse Roe, and looking at voting records and public histories can help us identify that candidate.

Does his voting record read like the Christmas wish list of a Woodstock refugee, all deconstruction? Does hers reveal an inveterate flip-flopper who prefers the political expediency of voting with the rest of her party, however the vote may shift? Or does his history show a willingness to sometimes take stands that make the rest of the party cringe as often as it cheers, simply because his commitment to established law and the Constitution is so strong that it trumps the party line?

That is an important question, and a fair one, because a pro-choice candidate who is enthralled with upholding the Constitution, and interpreting it with due deference to the intentions of its authors, is the candidate who will appoint Supreme Court justices with a similar passion.

Roe v. Wade is a law that never passed in a legislative body. You might call it a breech delivery in that it came about backwards, delivered by seven jurist midwives, not Congress. It will take another five passionate constitutionalists to turn it right. The 2008 elections will give the new president the chance to name several new justices, and it is vital that pro-lifers look for a candidate who is both electable (truly electable, and not a favored pipe dream) and devoted to rigorously defending the Constitution. Identify that candidate, and — whether he or she is pro-life or pro-choice — you will get your best chance to reverse Roe v. Wade. And the pro-abortion side knows it.

She makes a compelling and challenging case. The website also offers this persuasive counterpoint, from Mark Stricherz. Check them out, both of ’em.

To paraphrase another media outlet: we blog, you decide…