Unfounded ‘terror baby’ fear evokes deep-seated distrust of Muslim presence

Evidence

It appeared they would have young women who became pregnant [and] would get them into the United States to have a baby. They wouldn’t even have to pay anything for the baby, … And then they would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. And then one day, 20, 30 years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 523

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s guiding question about fear serving a function for the fearer — Gohmert’s rhetoric displaces anxiety about US decline onto a controllable female-body plot, echoing the cross-cultural moral-panic structure from ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back.’
• SEED: Angel for an essay: how the ‘terror baby’ and ‘anchor baby’ tropes convert anxieties about belonging and reproduction into a racialized female-body threat.