When can you vote for a pro-abortion candidate?

[josephback]

I was taught that abortion was the issue to base one’s vote on, but think that a candidate who is pro-abortion is more supportive of life in other ways. If one’s intention is not to support abortion but to address other life issues, is it licit to vote for such a politician?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

In his letter Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, at the time prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated:

A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.