Oklahoma just became the 17th state where we have helped to ban child marriage! Gov. Kevin Stitt declined to sign or veto the bill the legislature sent him to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions — so it passed into law without him.
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Until now the marriage age in Oklahoma has been ZERO, and some 3,452 minors were entered into marriage in the Sooner State between 2000 and 2021, mostly girls wed to adult men. And the suffering of these girls is profound: Oklahoma’s marriage-age laws have created a workaround for statutory rape laws and for human trafficking laws.
Besides, marriage before age 18 is recognized as a human rights abuse and as a particularly egregious form of forced marriage, which is a form of modern slavery.
So the law that just passed, which will go into effect in November, is a huge win for the nearly 490,000 girls in Oklahoma. But 33 other states — home to some 26 million girls — still allow child marriage. Let’s join forces to change that!
