A New Hampshire lawmaker who opposed a child marriage ban argued that teens are of a "ripe, fertile" age.
Republican state Rep. Jess Edwards said last week that a bill banning marriage for people under 18 would make abortion more appealing for young people.
"If we continually restrict the freedom of marriage as a legitimate social option, when we do this to people who are of a ripe, fertile age and may have a pregnancy and a baby involved, are we not in fact making abortion a much more desirable alternative, when marriage might be the right solution for some freedom-loving couples?" he said, in a video posted on X.
Edwards' description of young people being of a "ripe, fertile age" was met with laughter. Despite his intervention, the New Hampshire House passed the bill on Thursday, sending it to the governor.
This is New Hampshire Republican State Rep Jess Edwards arguing in favor of child marriage this week and referring to girls as “ripe” and “fertile.”
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 4, 2024
Thankfully, the bill passed and child marriage will soon be illegal in New Hampshire. pic.twitter.com/RJSYL8rpVS
In New Hampshire, the current minimum age for marriage is 16. Governor Chris Sununu raised the minimum age in 2018, and before that, 13-year-old girls and 14-year-old boys were allowed to marry with permission from a judge.
The new bill to raise the marriage age to 18 passed in the state Senate unanimously in March and in the House by 192 votes to 174 on Thursday.
Rep. Cassandra Levesque, a New Hampshire state Democrat, has for years been campaigning for the marriage age to be raised.
According to the New Hampshire Bulletin, when introducing the bill, she said: "This bill is important to be in law because we know that age of majority does not amount to maturity, and that there is a greater risk of human trafficking and domestic violence without these protections."
New Hampshire is the latest state to take steps towards banning child marriage. Last month, Virginia became the 12th state to ban it with no exceptions.
If New Hampshire's bill becomes law, it would leave Maine as the only state in the northeast of the U.S. that allows marriage below the age of 18.
Currently, Maine permits 16 and 17-year-olds to marry with written consent from their parents or legal guardians.
The legal discrepancy between the two neighboring states could pose challenges, as marriages involving individuals under 18 in Maine would not be recognized in New Hampshire.
In 2018, Delaware became the first state to set the minimum marrying age to 18. Most states currently have the minimum age set to 16, although some have raised it to 17.
Four states—California, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma—have no minimum marrying age.
Research by Unchained at Last, a nonprofit dedicated to ending child marriage in the U.S., found that nearly 300,000 children, some as young as 10, were married in the country between 2000 and 2018.
Most of these cases were underage girls marrying adult men, the nonprofit noted.
In many states, a person under the age of 18 can't initiate divorce proceedings without the support of a parent or guardian, meaning teenagers could end up stuck in marriages they no longer want to be in, according to the nonprofit.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights categorizes child marriage as a form of forced marriage because they say children are unable to give full, free and informed consent.
Update 05/07/24 at 7:42 a.m. ET; This article was updated with details about the law in New Hampshire.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
