Just when you thought nothing good happens anymore: The bill we and our allies have championed for more than six years, to ban child marriage, has officially passed into law. !!!
It passed without a gubernatorial signature. Disappointingly, Gov. Janet Mills chose not to sign this important bill to ban a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.
In our battle against this human rights abuse, we are now 14 states, one district and two territories down — including the entire northeastern United States, down to Maryland (we’re coming for you, MD!). What an extraordinary victory for the more than 9.6 million girls who live in those areas.
But we need to your help as we continue fighting: Some New Hampshire legislators are trying to bring back child marriage (WTF?). Please take 60 seconds right now to email New Hampshire legislators and urge them not to return to the Dark Ages.
Maine took an important first step in 2020 toward ending child marriage by raising the marriage age to 16, then another important step in 2023 by raising it to 17, but neither law went far enough: Some 79% of the minors who married in Maine before the 2023 law change were aged 17 (and 100% of the minors who married in Maine before the 2020 law change were age 16 or 17), so the 2023 law protected only 21% of those impacted by child marriage. Prior to 2020, the law allowed a parent to marry off a child of any age.
The new legislation closes the dangerous legal loopholes that allow parents or a judge to enter a 17-year-old into marriage without any input required from the teen, and without any real legal recourse for a teen who does not want to marry.
Our research found that some 1,174 minors were wed in Maine between 2000 and 2023 — and some 77% were girls wed to adult men an average of 3.7 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.”
Maine has now joined Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington, Virginia and New Hampshire 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 still have 36 states to go. We promise to keep advocating for the 27 million girls who live in those states, if you promise to keep partnering with us. Please donate now.
