USA - Laws Against Child Marriage Missing or Lax in 37 States : Alaina Demopoulos / The Guardian

 

 

Article shared by Viviane Sakkal

"...child marriage, which activists describe as one or both parties entering a union while under age 18, remains legal in 37 US states. There are no federal laws against it, meaning minors can marry, with parental consent, before they can vote, drink, or buy lottery tickets in the majority of the country. Some states have a minimum marriage age on the books, which ranges from 15 to 18. Four states – California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Mississippi – do not specify any minimum age at all."

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Excerpts

"Close to 300,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2018 in the US, according to a study conducted by Unchained at Last; a small number of them were as young as 10. Because 78% of minors who wed in that timespan were girls with adult husbands, advocates frame their cause around saving underage girls from older men."

So far this year, survivors have successfully campaigned to get child marriage taken off the books in three states, marking steady progress towards their goal of ending child marriage completely in the US by 2030"

“It’s been difficult to get legislators to pay attention to the issue and to take the simple, commonsense step of saying you have to be 18 to marry, the same way you have to be 18 to enter into almost any other contract.”

"Advocates also face interference from a seemingly odd cohort: rightwing politicians who are using child marriage as ammunition in their war on reproductive rights, and left-leaning organizations who say they are defending the rights of young people by protecting the legality of child marriage."