NBC: Pregnant at 15, married at 16: She's speaking out to end child marriages

[China]

Pregnant at 15, married at 16: She's speaking out to end child marriages

 

Chloe was a high school student in Idaho when she met a young father online in early 2015. They soon began dating and 10 months later, she was pregnant. But there was a problem: Chloe was 15, and her boyfriend was 22.

 

Chloe said he convinced her that the only way that he could avoid prison is “if we got married.”

 

So that’s what they did. On a cloudy day in March 2016, she married her older boyfriend believing it would shield him from statutory rape charges.

 

“He had researched it,” said Chloe, who was 16 at the time of the wedding and had convinced her mom to consent to the marriage. “He told me, ‘This is what we need to do. And if we don’t and I go to jail, it’s going to be all your fault.’”

 

Chloe’s story is not as uncommon as it might seem.

 

From 2000 to 2018, nearly 300,000 minors under the age of 18 were legally married in the U.S., according to a recent estimate by the nonprofit Unchained at Last, which obtained marriage certificates from 32 states and partial data from 12 others.

 

Roughly 86 percent of the children were girls and nearly 60,000 of the marriages involved an age difference such that the younger spouse could have been considered a victim of a sex crime.

 

Since 2000, the number of child marriages in the U.S. has declined each year – dropping from a high of nearly 80,000 in 2000 to just under 2,500 in 2018.

 

Just this summer, lawmakers in both Maine and New Hampshire voted against raising the marriage age to 18 in part, some said, because the age of consent for sex is 16.

 

NBC News contacted 80 state senators and representatives in the two states who had opposed the bills. Only six responded, including Maine state senator Bill Diamond.

 

Diamond, who is a Democrat, said he opposed the measure because he believes that parents want the right to enter their children into marriage.

 

In an interview, he acknowledged that he hadn’t spoken to any such parents or anyone who was married as a child. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Wyoming Republican Party ‘Alerts’ Members Against Child Marriage Bill

 

Just as a proposed Wyoming law disallowing marriages for people 15 and younger survived its first state Senate floor vote Thursday, state Republican Party leadership is warning members about the bill, dispatching an argument that there could be cases where 15-year-olds should be allowed to marry.

 

“This bill may seem harmless, but there are concerns about constitutional rights that you need to form your own opinions about,” reads a Thursday mass email on behalf of the Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee referencing House Bill 7.  

 

The bill would void future marriages involving people younger than 16, but would allow 16- or 17-year-olds to get married with parental consent. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Bang]

Lookie here, it ain't the gub'mint's god danged bidness when my sister and i decide it's time to get biblical.

 

Ima tell you whut.

 

~GOP

[Larry]

But if we don't let 'em get married, what we gonna do with the baby we're gonna force her to have?  

[Renegade7]

Children shouldn't be allowed to get married...

[Captain Wiggles]

Usta be able to marry 14 year olds in NC up until recently. Take a wild guess which party changed that ****? 🤭

 

 

[Destino]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

Children shouldn't be allowed to get married...

and this shouldn’t be the least bit controversial.

[tshile]

14 minutes ago, Destino said:

and this shouldn’t be the least bit controversial.

And yet, here we are…

 

the funny thing is. Remember pizza gate? And all the years of awkward and weird projection on so many things?

 

wait till we find out republicans drink the blood of babies. 
 

you think that’s a joke, but, take a look around…

[China]

1 hour ago, tshile said:

And yet, here we are…

 

the funny thing is. Remember pizza gate? And all the years of awkward and weird projection on so many things?

 

wait till we find out republicans drink the blood of babies. 
 

you think that’s a joke, but, take a look around…

 

Does that happen during those coke-fueled orgies Madison Cawthorn was talking about?

[tshile]

Right idea wrong drug.

 

bath salts. 
 

think about it. Florida. Face eating. Republican state. Murdoc is old. Quest for ever lasting life. Babies. Power is required to fuel it all. Must keep power. 
 

Projection.  

[Destino]

13 hours ago, China said:

 

Does that happen during those coke-fueled orgies Madison Cawthorn was talking about?

the ones that a mere mentioning got him drummed out of congress?  The media let that slide too easily.  Where are the old school investigative reporters these days?  You’d think one of them would have personally attended one of these coke orgies and written a book by now.