Greetings from Lansing, where we just got to watch Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ceremonially sign the legislation to make Michigan the 10th U.S. state where we have helped to end child marriage!
For the first time in history, we have achieved THREE legislative victories in one year — and have now helped to end child marriage in 20 percent of the country. The 7.5 million girls who live in those states can no longer be legally subjected to a human rights abuse and nightmarish legal trap that destroys nearly every aspect of their lives. Only 40 states to go.
You might remember that Gov. Whitmer signed most of the 10-bill package to ban child marriage back in July, but a last-minute procedural snafu held up the rest of the package, so we had to wait until today to celebrate with “Big Gretch.”
Bills to end child marriage died in the legislature during the past three legislative sessions, but we kept fighting. Under the leadership of Sen. Sarah Anthony and Rep. Kara Hope and alongside our allies in the Michigan Coalition to End Child Marriage, we Chained-In at the state capitol, in bridal gowns and chains, to urge legislators to finally take action and end child marriage in Michigan — something we’ve been pushing them to do for six years. We met one-on-one with nearly every Michigan state legislator. We testified at legislative hearings and submitted memos of support, and we recruited our allies to do the same. We compiled in-depth legal research conducted on a pro bono basis by the law firms White & Case and DLA Piper. We launched email campaigns to target state legislators.
And it worked!
Supporters like Roberts Family Foundation, Focus For Health and the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago made our work possible with their generosity. And you made this victory possible, if you took action on our email campaigns, shared our posts on social media or supported us financially.
Until now, dangerous legal loopholes in Michigan allowed parents to enter a child of any age into marriage without any input required from the child, and without any real legal recourse for a child who did not want to marry — and 5,426 children were entered into marriage in Michigan between 2000 and 2021, including 12 children who were not old enough to consent to sex. Some 95% of the children were girls wed to adult men an average of 4.3 years older — often with devastating, lifelong consequences for the girls. There’s a reason the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse” that destroys almost every aspect of an American girl’s life.
Further, marriage before age 18 creates a nightmarish legal trap: Even the most mature minor faces overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to resist or escape a forced marriage.
Michigan has now joined Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut in embracing the simple, commonsense legislative solution we are pushing in all 50 U.S. states: Set the marriage age at 18, without exceptions. Such legislation harms no one, costs nothing and ends a human rights abuse.
We promise to keep pushing to make sure the U.S. keeps its promise under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to end forced and child marriage by year 2030.
Your support makes that possible! Please donate now.
The Michigan Coalition to End Child Marriage includes:
