Legislative Terror: Theorizing Laws Against Autonomy

Abstract

The dominant discourse of terror is one of physical violence, inflicted by bad actors or rogue nations. In this concept paper, I expand the notion of “terror” to consider how some legislation acts to inflict targeted harm on specific segments of the population. Using anti-abortion and antitransgender legislation, I build a framework to theorize what I call “legislative terror,” which creates environments that produce physical, mental, and symbolic violence, and violates multiple international human rights laws. I invite other scholars to utilize this framework to reconsider past legislation as forms of legislative terror visited on marginalized bodies, and to consider mechanisms and policies to mitigate these harms in the future.