A Pro-Life Progressive Legal Theory?

MOJ reader Patrick Gallagher has sent an inquiry to some of us at MOJ.  Pat has given me permission to reproduce his e-mail message to me.  If any of you other MOJ readers have any thoughts in response to  Pat's inquiry, please e-mail Pat at this address:   [email protected]

Now, here is Pat's message:

I’m contacting you in hopes that you can help me with some research I’m doing.  I am a Catholic and consider myself politically to be a pro-life liberal.  That’s almost an oxymoron, and I often feel politically homeless because of the generic calculus of pro-life=Republican=conservative and pro-choice=Democrat=liberal.  Recently, I’ve been interested in how that classifying plays out in judicial appointments, where Republicans will only appoint pro-life conservatives and Democrats pro-choice liberals.  My interest is really in whether there are pro-life liberal judges and if there is a pro-life progressive judicial or legal theory.

I’m writing you because I’ve read blog postings or other writings by or about you that lead me to believe that we occupy the same general political neighborhood.  I’d love to get your take as a legal scholar on this question of a pro-life progressive legal theory.  While I think there is likely to be an affinity between them, I also think this would be distinct from a Catholic legal theory.  Is there scholarship in this area?  Can you direct me to it?  More generally, what would you suggest I read to become more familiar with the issue?  (I should confess that I’m not a lawyer.)  Are there pro-life progressive judges, and who are they?