We’ve been having a busy summer here at Unchained, and it’s been getting us a lot of media attention! Our efforts to end child marriage across the U.S. have made headlines in The Los Angeles Times, CT Insider, The 19th and The Guardian, to name a few.
Follow us on social media to keep up with our work, and see other ways you can get involved to help us end forced and child marriage in every U.S. state and at the federal level.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer yesterday signed most of the 10-bill package championed by Sen. Sarah Anthony and Rep. Kara Hope to ban child marriage in Michigan.
But due to a last-minute procedural snafu right before the legislature’s summer recess began, four bills in the package have not yet made it to Gov. Whitmer’s desk. When the house returns from recess in the fall, it must vote again on those bills and Gov. Whitmer must sign them — and then Michigan will become the 10th U.S. state where our relentless advocacy has helped to end child marriage!
We wore bridal gowns and chains last week as we gathered outside the California State Capitol to protest child marriage. More than 20 child marriage survivors and allies joined Chain-In Sacramento — made possible by the generous support of the Conboy Foundation — to urge legislators to end a human rights abuse and nightmarish legal trap that destroys girls’ lives.
Speakers included:
Child marriage is an urgent problem in California, where the effective marriage age is zero. More than 8,000 California children marry each year. Yet state legislators have resisted passing simple, commonsense legislation to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions.
One of the goals of a Chain-In is to get media attention to spread our message, and it worked. Chain-In Sacramento garnered headlines in CalMatters, The Sacramento Bee, KNX News (no link available), KQED, SFGate, VigourTimes, Yahoo News, CapRadio and more.
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.
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 seize on the momentum. If you live in California, contact your legislators now and urge them to end child marriage in California. And wherever you live, here are other ways you can get involved.
We hope you are not yet tired of winning, because we just did it again.
After six years of our relentless advocacy, the Michigan legislature just sent the legislation to ban child marriage over its final hurdle and to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk.
If (when) Gov. Whitmer signs the legislation into law, Michigan will become the 10th U.S. state — and the third this year! — where we have helped to eliminate a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives. #18NoExceptions
We just stood alongside acting Gov. Susan Bysiewicz as she signed the bill we tirelessly promoted for more than six years to make the marriage age in Connecticut 18, no exceptions.
Connecticut is now the ninth U.S. state where we have helped to end child marriage — a stunning victory for the nearly 6.5 million girls who live in those states! Only 41 states to go.
You might remember we Chained-In earlier this month outside the Connecticut State Capitol, in bridal gowns and chains, to protest state senators’ inaction on ending child marriage — and vowed to return every day until the end of the legislative session unless they took action — and it worked! Minutes after our Chain-In ended, senators came outside to tell us they would vote on the bill that day. We sat in the senate chamber in our bridal gowns and chains and watched the senate pass the bill unanimously. (Contrast that with the house vote last month, when 45 representatives voted against ending this human rights abuse.)
Don’t worry if you couldn’t witness this historic victory in person. You can read all about it via the Associated Press, NBC Connecticut, Fox News, Connecticut Mirror, The Hartford Courant, CT Insider, WTNH News8, CT News Junkie, The Messenger and more.
But this victory wasn’t achieved from just one Chain-In. Thanks to the generosity of supporters like the Roberts Family Foundation, Focus For Health and the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, we advocated to end child marriage in Connecticut for more than six years. We formed the Connecticut Coalition to End Child Marriage. We met one-on-one with nearly every Connecticut 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 and social media campaigns to target state legislators.
And we had many strong champions in the Connecticut legislature who ensured this bill passed, including Reps. Jillian Gilchrest, Sarah Keitt, Dominique Johnson and Gary Turco and Sens. Mae Flexer, Herron Gaston, Ceci Maher and Gary Winfield.
Previously, dangerous legal loopholes allowed parents to enter 16- and 17-year-olds into marriage in Connecticut with no real legal recourse for a minor who was forced to marry. Emancipated 16- and 17-year-olds could also marry. 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. Further, marriage before 18 is recognized as a human rights abuse that destroys almost every aspect of an American girl’s life.
Our research found that more than 1,250 minors, some as young as 14, were married in Connecticut between 2000 and 2021. Most were girls wed to adult men.
Connecticut now joins most of its neighbors in the northeast in eliminating marriage before 18, no exceptions: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as Minnesota, have all ended child marriage.
The Connecticut Coalition to End Child Marriage includes:
The Michigan senate just passed the bill package to end child marriage that we’ve been promoting for seven years. !!! And the house passed the same legislation yesterday. !!!
Each chamber now needs to pass the other’s legislation. If they do, the bill package — championed by Sen. Sarah Anthony and Rep. Kara Hope — then goes to the governor’s desk.
We write this from Sacramento, where we just Chained-In to urge legislators to end child marriage in California. And we’re heading to Connecticut tomorrow to watch the acting governor sign the child marriage bill into law. We won’t rest until we end child marriage in every U.S. state.
WE DID IT!
Dressed in bridal gowns and chains, we and our allies gathered at the Connecticut State Capitol Friday to urge Connecticut senators to pass HB6569, the simple, commonsense bill that would end child marriage in Connecticut – and we promised to come back every day until the end of the legislative session, unless they passed the bill. And it worked!
Following our Chain-In, we sat in the senate chamber, still in gowns and chains, and watched the senate finally vote UNANIMOUSLY to end child marriage. !!!
The house passed the same bill a few weeks ago, to eliminate a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives. Which means the bill we have been promoting since 2017 to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions, now goes to Gov. Ned Lamont.
And Lamont has promised to sign it.
With passage of this bill, championed by Rep. Jillian Gilchrest and bipartisan legislators, Connecticut will become the ninth U.S. state where our relentless advocacy has helped to end child marriage. (We are doing everything we can to make sure Michigan soon becomes the 10th state.)
Speakers at the Chain-In included:
Our Chain-In drew the attention of legislators, passersby and news media, including the Associated Press, NBC Connecticut, Fox News, Connecticut Mirror, The Hartford Courant, CT Insider, WTNH News8, CT News Junkie, The Messenger and more.
Connecticut could end child marriage right now — but the senate is not moving a pending bill that the house already passed, and the governor promised to sign, to end this human rights abuse. And if they don’t act by Wednesday, the bill will die.
This calls for an emergency protest.
We will Chain-In in Hartford on June 2. We will wear bridal gowns and chains to urge Connecticut senators to pass HB6569, the simple, commonsense bill that would eliminate all marriage before age 18, no exceptions.
If the senate doesn’t take action, we may turn this into a perpetual Chain-In: We will Chain-In at the capitol EVERY DAY until the end of the legislative session (June 7), unless the senate passes the bill.
Speakers at the Chain-In will 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 Hartford
June 2 | 10:30 a.m.
South side of the Connecticut State Capitol
210 Capitol Ave., Hartford, CT
Child Marriage in the United States
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.
There are not many movements in the U.S. where we can point to one activist and say, “That person was both the spark and the fire,” Chelsea Clinton — our longtime ally — recently told our Fraidy Reiss (see the video below).
But when it comes to the national movement to end the harmful practices of forced and child marriage, the six million girls who live in the eight states where we have helped to end child marriage “truly owe that right and that freedom to you,” Chelsea told Fraidy.
Fraidy replied that no one person can end forced and child marriage in the U.S., not even one person wearing her signature, deep red lipstick.
“It takes a village,” Fraidy said.
Thank you for being an important member of that village, along with us and Chelsea Clinton. Please donate today to help us keep fighting forced and child marriage in the U.S.
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 some 23,588 minors were entered into marriage in California between 2000 and 2018 — often with devastating, lifelong consequences for the girls. All of these marriages legalized what would have been considered a sex crime outside of marriage. There’s a reason the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse.”
This calls for a protest.
We will Chain-In in Sacramento on June 22. We will wear bridal gowns and chains to urge legislators to introduce and pass a simple, commonsense bill that would end child marriage in California.
Speakers at the Chain-In will 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 Sacramento
June 22 | 8:30 a.m.
West Steps of the California State Capitol
1315 10th St., Sacramento, CA
Chain-In Sacramento is possible thanks to a generous grant from the Conboy Foundation.
Child Marriage in the United States
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.
