As you might have read in Mercury News, Newsweek and other news outlets, more than 20 forced and child marriage survivors, activists and allies joined us in San Jose last Thursday to chain-in outside Asm. Ash Kalra’s office, in bridal gowns and chains.
Our message to Kalra was clear: Stop holding up AB2924, the widely popular bill to end child marriage in California and eliminate a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.
Forced and child marriage survivors from California and across the United States joined us to share their personal stories and to chant and sing in protest against child marriage. We were joined, as well, by allies from the California Coalition to End Child Marriage, including several members of Zonta International.
We at Unchained started and now lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in the United States by making the marriage age 18, no exceptions, in all 50 states. One of the many ways we advocate for change is by hosting Chain-Ins like this. Read more here about this form of peaceful protest we invented.
Child marriage is an urgent problem in California. Dangerous legal loopholes allow parents to enter a child of ANY AGE into marriage with judicial approval — without any real legal recourse for a child who does not want to marry. And U.S. census data shows that more than 8,000 children (mostly girls) in California are entered into marriage every year — often with devastating, lifelong consequences. All of these marriages legalized what would have been considered a sex crime outside of marriage.
Marriage before 18 can too easily be forced, because minors, even a day before their 18th birthday, have limited legal rights that make resisting or escaping an unwanted marriage nearly impossible. Further, marriage before 18 is a human rights abuse that destroys American girls’ health, education and economic opportunities and greatly increases their risk of experiencing violence.
Let’s continue pushing. Contact Kalra now to remind him that girls matter, and then see other ways you can get involved.
We refuse to stay silent while California Asm. Ash Kalra blocks the widely popular bill to end child marriage, a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.
Child marriage is an urgent problem in California. Dangerous legal loopholes allow parents to enter a child of ANY AGE into marriage with judicial approval — without any real legal recourse for a child who does not want to marry.
Our research shows that more than 8,000 children (mostly girls) in California are entered into marriage every year — often with devastating, lifelong consequences. All of these marriages legalized what would have been considered a sex crime outside of marriage.
This calls for a protest.
We at Unchained At Last urge you to Chain-In with us in San Jose on July 18. We’ll gather outside Asm. Kalra’s district office wearing bridal gowns and veils, with our arms chained and mouths taped, to protest forced and child marriage and urge him to pass AB2924, the simple, commonsense bill that would end child marriage in California.
We provide the bridal gowns, veils and chains. All you need to do is register here – and join us to insist Asm. Kalra and California legislators end child marriage!
Speakers include:
We also will sing and chant against forced and child marriage, including a rendition of The Girls You Have Destroyed, a chilling poem/song we wrote about child marriage in the United States.
Chain-In San Jose
July 18 | 10:00 a.m. PT
Outside Asm. Ash Kalra’s office
111 W St. John St., San Jose, CA 95113
We at Unchained started and now lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in the United States by making the marriage age 18, no exceptions, in all 50 states.
Marriage before 18 can too easily be forced, because minors, even a day before their 18th birthday, have limited legal rights that make resisting or escaping an unwanted marriage nearly impossible. Further, marriage before 18 is a human rights abuse that destroys American girls’ health, education and economic opportunities and greatly increases their risk of experiencing violence.
Join the movement. Chain-In with us to demand an end to this human rights abuse.
It took us seven years, but we finally convinced New Hampshire that child marriage is bad!
Gov. Chris Sununu just signed legislation — on which we had partnered with Sen. Debra Altschiller, Rep. Cassie Levesque and allies across New Hampshire — to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions.
So we are now 13 states down in our push to end an archaic, harmful practice that destroys girls’ lives and creates a nightmarish legal trap for them. That’s a big deal for the 9.3 million girls who live in those 13 states.
Bills to limit or end child marriage died in the legislature during the previous six sessions, but we refused to give up. Alongside our allies in the New Hampshire Coalition to End Child Marriage that we convened, as well as legislative champions like Sen. Altschiller and Rep. Levesque, we met one-on-one with key New Hampshire state legislators. 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 Elluminate, 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.
New Hampshire took an important first step in 2018 toward ending child marriage by raising the marriage age to 16, but that legislation did not go far enough: 96% of the minors who married in New Hampshire between 2000 and 2023 were age 16 or 17, so the 2018 legislation only protected four percent of the individuals it was intended to protect. Previously, the law allowed a parent to marry off girls as young as 13 and boys as young as 14.
The new legislation closes the dangerous legal loopholes that allow parents to enter a child as young as 16 into marriage without any input required from the child, and without any real legal recourse for a child who does not want to marry.
Our research found that some 215 minors as young as 13 were wed in New Hampshire between 2000 and 2023 — and more than 80% were girls wed to adult men an average of nearly four years older.
Furthermore, child marriage creates a nightmarish legal trap that destroys nearly every aspect of an American girl’s life. There’s a reason the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse.”
New Hampshire has now joined Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington and Virginia 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.
Only 37 states to go. If you keep partnering with us and cheering us on, we promise to keep fighting for the 27 million girls who live in those states. Please donate now.
The New Hampshire Coalition to End Child Marriage includes:
Every day that California Asm. Ash Kalra continues to block the bill to end child marriage, an estimated 22 more minors in CA are subjected to this human rights abuse. Most are girls wed to adult men.
As of today, that means Kalra is responsible for some 1,232 minors married off since April 17. We cannot allow this number to continue growing.
Please help us change Kalra’s mind. We will tweet/post at Kalra every day at 3pm ET/12pm PT about this, until he moves the bill, and we hope you will do the same. Let’s use the following language — and add 22 every day to the estimated total:
@Ash_Kalra: An estimated 1,232 CA minors have been forced to marry since you blocked the bill to #EndChildMarriage. Most were girls wed to adult men. Each day you refuse a hearing, another ~22 minors are subjected to a #HumanRights abuse. #GirlsMatter #PassAB2924
We’re still seeking a Senior Writer and Researcher to join our growing team — but we are now offering a significantly higher salary. And, as always, we are offering outstanding benefits that show how much we value our team members:
Of course, that’s in addition to the mad bragging rights and deep sense of fulfillment that come with helping to steer the national movement to end forced and child marriage.
We refuse to stay silent while California Asm. Ash Kalra blocks the widely popular bill to end child marriage, a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.
So does Alyssa Milano, the actress and activist who helped launch the #MeToo movement.
Alyssa and our founder/executive director Fraidy Reiss just co-authored this op-ed article for Kalra’s hometown paper, in which they blast him and the two groups that are pressuring him to block the legislation: American Civil Liberties Union of California and Planned Parenthood of California.
Unlike their affiliates in nearly every other U.S. state — and despite International Planned Parenthood Federation’s calling child marriage “one of the most persistent forms of sanctioned sexual abuse of girls” — these two California groups have taken an outrageous and passionate position in support of a harmful practice the rest of the world has vowed to eliminate by year 2030 to help achieve gender equality.
Please share the op-ed and take a minute to email Kalra to urge him to stop blocking the legislation.
It’s a sad day for girls in Missouri: The bill to end child marriage officially died after the state House of Representatives refused to move the bill the state Senate had passed with near-unanimous support.
Rep. Hardy Billington, one of the bill’s opponents, insisted pregnant teens must get married lest they turn instead to abortion — even though abortion is pretty much impossible in Missouri, which has one of the strictest bans in the United States.
We promise not to give up on girls in Missouri or any other state: We’ll keep pushing to make the marriage age #18NoExceptions in all 50 states. And we know we can count on you to keep pushing with us.
Not to brag (OK, totally to brag), but New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof gave us a shout-out in his new memoir, Chasing Hope, as he recalled learning how prevalent child marriage was in the United States, thanks to our work. Read the segment of his book that mentions us below, or read the full book, available here.
Our tireless advocacy continues to pay off: The New Hampshire house just voted 192-174 to end child marriage, a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives. The bill now goes to Gov. Chris Sununu’s desk. (!!!)
We’ve been pushing the New Hampshire legislature to eliminate this human rights abuse since 2017, so this is a hard-fought win.
We promise we will not stop until all 50 U.S. states make the marriage age 18, no exceptions.
It’s a lucky day for social workers: We are looking to add a couple more to our team as we continue to combat forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change.
