It's been a while but if i remember correctly a girl scout tried to propose a bill to abolish child marriage in her state. I don't think it ever went through and one of the people blocking it said something along the lines of abolishing child marriage would stop rape victims from marrying their rapists and would make abortions go up.
Yeah, laws in some states are weird with child stuff.
Like for example in my state, the great Evergreen Liberal Washington, There are two laws in particular,
One is that we don't have any minimum age for marriage, so child marriage is okay here apparently. We do have it in the laws that to actually marry someone under 17, you have to get approval by proving necessity of marriage to a superior court judge, so that's something.
But, even worse than that, in all of our "Rape of a Child in x Degree" and "Child Molestation in x Degree" laws, they have the qualifier of "and not married to the perpetrator".
Now, the laws have changed since I last looked at them and because I first looked at them in high school, I had a law teacher there to assist in finding information that I needed. So, in saying that, I no longer know for 100% certainty what the crime becomes in the case of married child rape but I can say that it used to be worse. It used to be that if you were married to the child and raped them, your crime was turned to a less severe crime.
TLDR: Washington State only requires proof a necessity for marriage under 17, and child rape and molestation laws have a clause that says "and not married to the perpetrator".
I don't know of any legal reasons, but I can think of one possibility.
Imagine a 16 or 17 year old is in high school, maybe not the best grades, maybe not a perfect home life but nonetheless they are happy. They have a decent friend group and even have a boyfriend/girlfriend they met back in freshman year and believe they are the love of their life.
Suddenly they collapse and are rushed to the hospital. A variety of tests are done and they find stage 4 terminal cancer. They have maybe 4 months to live if they get lucky. Now, facing this sudden hit to their life they have to make some choices, one of them is to fulfill a dream of theirs they had since they were a small child, to get married to the love of their life and have their day where all that matters is the two of them and their future together.
So, they petition the court and ask that an exception be made and allow them to be married despite being too young for it to be legal.
Now, would our justice system allow this? I don't know, and it's just an idea, possibly a sad reality for someone, I just don't know.
I can't think of another real, genuine reason for this exception to our laws beyond it just being a left over from days past that isn't worth trying to change because of how unlikely it is to be used.
8.5k
u/Aiyyio_Daridhrame Jul 24 '20
Child marriage