2mo ago

Senate passes historic bill banning child marriage in Islamabad

www.geo.tv

9 comments

“Living with a child under 18 in a marital relationship will be considered statutory rape,” the bill states.
Okay that's actually huge, well done Pakistan.
- That's a good bar. Was worried for a second they defined "child" as something ridiculously young
Pakistan, less bass-ackwards that 36 US states in this particular department.
- Yikes. Only "13 states have banned underage marriages, with no exception. The first one was Delaware in 2018."
  
  To be fair, a lot of those have marriage ages set to 18 unless you're ~17 years old and get the approval of a judge. I'm not saying it's okay, because it isn't, but when you hear "child marriage" you tend to think 12, not 17.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
  
  And the ACLU helped block the legislation to ban it in California.
- Eh. I think it's kind of crazy to call a 17 year old getting married "child marriage." It's not like something magic happens on the 18th birthday that makes someone a full adult. It should probably line up with the voting age but it's obviously not the same thing as the states with no minimum age requirement at all. I'm a lot more concerned with the four states with no limit at all, and the fact that many states have only added minimum marriage ages at all in the past decade. I knew a girl in high school who got married to an adult who got her pregnant at 14 because that was legal with parental consent in my state back then. That's the sort of thing that we should be focused on, not juicing the numbers with states having slightly different ages of consent
  
  If they’re too young to drink in the eyes of the law, they’re too young to get married.

9 comments