We’re now five down, 45 to go in our national movement to end child marriage in every U.S. state. We just stood beside Gov. Daniel McKee and the bill’s sponsors — Rep. Julie Casimiro and Sen. John Burke — as the governor signed H5387/S398 and made Rhode Island the fifth U.S. state to ban all marriage before 18, without exceptions. !!
We have been advocating relentlessly for months for this historic victory. Along with our allies at AHA Foundation, American Atheists, CHILD USA, Global Hope 365, Human Rights Watch, J Strategies, National Coalition to End Child Marriage, Students Against Child Marriage, UNICEF USA and Zonta International, and numerous child marriage survivors, we met with or called every state legislator. We testified at legislative hearings and submitted memos of support. We compiled in-depth legal research conducted on a pro bono basis by the law firms White & Case, DLA Piper and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. We partnered with Lush, whose generosity made all this work possible. You joined us too, if you shared our posts on social media or supported us financially.
The previous law in Rhode Island created a nightmarish legal trap: Minors of any age could be entered into marriage by a parent and/or a judge, without any input from the minor — before the minor was old enough to leave home, enter a domestic violence shelter, retain an attorney or even file for divorce. Minors could be married off before they were old enough to consent to sex.
Child marriage therefore was often forced marriage and, in some cases, covered up rape. Further, marriage before 18 produces such devastating, lifelong repercussions for girls that the U.S. State Department has called it a human rights abuse.
An estimated 171 children in Rhode Island were subjected to this human rights abuse between 2000 and 2018 — and some 88% were girls wed to adult men. But that will never happen again.
To date, our advocacy has helped to end child marriage — without exceptions — in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Rhode Island. The New York legislature last week passed a bill to end child marriage, and it is waiting for the governor’s signature. Let’s move on to the next state together. #18NoExceptions
