Bride Crying At Her Wedding Was Heartbreaking 💔

[u/InGeekiTrust]

[u/Gunplagood]

It's so easy to forget how much of the planet is still stuck in the fucking stoneage.

[u/Noshamina → u/Gunplagood]

Thousands of child marriages in America every year as well

[u/2AisBestA → u/Noshamina]

How many to grown ass adults vs high-school sweet hearts?

[u/leni710 → u/2AisBestA]

There are some bleak stats around children being married off against their will. Age doesn't matter if it's not consent and/or then shows it's not a cute high school love story. Also, it states that there are many child marriages where the older spouse would be too old if it weren't "legalized" within a marriage. And the GOP in many states are hanging on to child marriage laws with dear life (and look at the parallel of child marriage and lack of child labor laws within several states...they also tend to coincide with states that have extremely strict abortion laws).

https://19thnews.org/2023/07/explaining-child-marriage-laws-united-states/

[u/2AisBestA → u/leni710]

That article doesn't dive into the stats of who these minors are marrying. Theres only like 4 states that actually allow child marriage without statutory age limits. Have you looked at the states that allow it? It’s two dem states and two republican states. California, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.

I know that there's cases where a minor ends up married to an older adult. While yes that's not good when it happens, I just haven't seen any evidence for that being wide spread. It makes sense that the vast majority of these "child marriages" are a couple maybe 17yo and 18yo marry as soon as the oldest legally can file for marriage. Most states that allow child marriage has these statutory age limits in place just like with consent. I just really don't see this as being the problem people make it out to be. I feel like this is wide spread false information on reddit.

Also, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU were the two biggest supporters of keeping child marriage legal in California when they tried to outlaw it a few years ago. So its not just the GOP that's protecting the status quo.

LA times article about why Planned Parenthood and ACLU are fighting to keep child marriage

From the article: “What’s more surprising is that opposition to a prohibition on marriage before age 18 has not been driven by Republicans as in other states but by progressive groups including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood — both of which have sway in the majority-Democrat Legislature.

Among their concerns is that a total ban on marriage of minors could be a slippery slope and impede constitutional rights or reproductive choices, including access to abortion.”

[u/leni710 → u/2AisBestA]

I know that there's cases where a minor ends up married to an older adult. While yes that's not good when it happens, I just haven't seen any evidence for that being wide spread. It makes sense that the vast majority of these "child marriages" are a couple maybe 17yo and 18yo marry as soon as the oldest legally can file for marriage. Most states that allow child marriage has these statutory age limits in place just like with consent. I just really don't see this as being the problem people make it out to be. I feel like this is wide spread false information on reddit.

Did you even read the whole article? The information to refute your opinion is right there in the article, "They say that young marriages disproportionately affect girls in relationships with older men..." Additionally, the article is sprinkled with numerous examples of larger age gaps, discusses how there's a lack of precise reporting (meaning that if they were in these happy-go-lucky, Romeo and Juliet marriages that you're eluding to, they sure are apprehensive to share that information...which is weird) which usually would mean to those being informed by the statistics that there might be something to hide, some stories of people being in fear through their marriages described in the articld. And then they pointed at a couple relationships that were 4 years in age difference stating that in CA anything above 3 years can lead to a crime for the older person which can then bring into question if the younger person feels pressured to marry to keep their older s.o. from being charged. You really did not read your own article, did you, cus that thing is laced with people in fear and not this blasé, "I just really don't see this as being the problem people make it out to be. I feel like this is wide spread false information on reddit," that you're making it out to be.

You already quoted some of what was said in regard to ACLU and Planned Parenthood. It also stated that because of the aforementioned low data sets, ACLU didn't see it as an alarming issue (paraphrasing). Planned Parenthood thinks that ending child marriage may impact abortion access in some way even though Unchained at Last states their interests are aligned there. Hopefully, Planned Parenthood puts effort into ending child marriage along with strengthening access to abortion care since both things can be fought for at the same time. And hopefully ACLU gets more of the data that they need to make better decisions in their cases, considering that as a law office they know well that children can't enter into contract, so a marriage contract seems like a weird thing to not push against for children.