This story is a part of Ask Alabama, a weekly interaction with our readers, where you ask the questions, you vote to decide which questions we answer, and then we investigate. One reader asks, "Alabama ranks number 4 in states with the most child marriages, often to adults. Why is it legal for children to marry?"
Back in May 2001, a bill was introduced into the Alabama Senate that sought to raise the age a person can marry from 14 years-old to 16. But during a late night filibuster, the bill failed to pass. Lawmakers did not want to raise the age, according to an Associated Press report from the time.
"I couldn't believe there was so much opposition to it," said former Alabama representative John Hilliard (D-Birmingham), who introduced the bill after discovering that children from neighboring states were coming into Alabama to get married. "How can it be that a child as young as that was being promised out by their parents? And almost nobody at the time was able to tell me why it was okay for it to continue."
It would be another two years before the state increased the minimum age to 16. "That's still a child," Hilliard pointed out when he spoke to AL.com.
All 50 states currently allow children under the age of 18 to marry. Some require parental consent, while half have no age limit. Between 2000 and 2015, over 200,000 children have been married across the country, according to data from 38 states and two counties collated by advocacy groups and later published by PBS's Frontline.
Just over 8,600 of those child marriages took place in Alabama. The youngest was 13 and the biggest age divide between spouses was 60 years. A 14 year old girl married a 74 year old man, according to the Frontline data.
Alabama ranks as the 4th highest in the country for total child marriages since 2000. Over that time, Texas has allowed more than 40,000 child marriages, highest in the country.
When viewing child marriages as a percentage of all marriages, Alabama drops to 10th. Idaho saw 84 child marriages per 10,000 marriages, the highest rate in the nation since 2000.
However, since the law in Alabama changed in 2003, through a bill sponsored by Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, child marriage has dropped considerably. In 2000, 1,198 children married in Alabama. That dropped to 190 in 2014, the last year that data was readily available.
Current Alabama law requires permission from both parents, judicial approval, and does not allow a pregnancy exception, which is a law that means a girl younger than 16 years old can marry if she is pregnant.
By nearly all measurements, Alabama has more progressive laws than many other states, noted Fraidy Reiss, the founder of Unchained at Last, a New Jersey-based non-profit charity that supports women and children trying to leave or avoid arranged/forced marriages.
She said that marrying off a child before age that age is dangerous and a practice that needs to end. "It has devastating repercussions even when a child enters into it willingly," said Reiss, who escaped an arranged and abusive marriage as an adult. "Because in most states you don't become an adult until age 18, it's nearly impossible to protect yourself if your parents force you into a marriage. If you leave home you're considered a runaway; if an advocate helps you they can be charged with kidnapping; if you make it to a shelter they may well try to reunite you with your parents."
"In most states you're not even allowed to bring a legal action in your own name. It's entirely too easy for a child to be forced into a marriage," she added.
But getting to the bottom of the why child marriage is still allowed is not easy, as former Rep. Hilliard alluded to.
Throughout her nationwide research, Reiss observed that the overwhelming reason that legislators have kept the age down is it offers young pregnant women an alternative to abortion. "Marrying off a pregnant girl often relieves the burden on the parents and means that, in some cases, abortions can be avoided."
Reiss adds that she believes that there is also a lack of understanding of the big issues in many states, where the majority of legislators are older white Christian men. "That often means it's hard to get support," she said, noting that legislators often have very different priorities than increasing the marriage age. "But that's not the case in all states because the primary sponsor in many places has been a white man."
Legislators in New Jersey passed a bill earlier this year increasing the age to 18, but that was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie. "I agree that protecting the well-being, dignity, and freedom of minors is vital, but the severe bar this bill creates is not necessary to address the concerns voiced by the bill's proponents and does not comport with the sensibilities and, in some cases, the religious customs, of the people of this State," Christie said in his veto message.
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