'I don't want another girl to experience what I did at 16'

Despite hearing shocking stories of abusive ordeals suffered by teenagers in the US, many Republicans are trying to find new ways to keep child marriage legal

- Kelly Rissman

“I had just turned 16 in September and I got married in December,” says Jennifer Brown. Her husband was 23 when they were married in 1992 in Mississippi. Despite the pair’s glaring age difference – or the fact that she was a child – “no one batted an eye” throughout the marriage process, Brown tells The Independent: not her father, who signed the parental consent form, the pastor, who wed them, or a “single soul” in the county clerk’s office, where they signed the marriage paperwork.

Brown recalls nobody interjecting to say: “Wait a minute. She’s 16. He’s 23. This is actually statutory rape.” Mississippi marriage law requires boys to be 17 and girls to be 15 to wed – but that age floor can be waived with parental consent and other exemptions, meaning a child of any age could be married.

As shocking as Brown’s experience may be, it is far from rare in the United States. Child marriage is still legal in 2024 in 37 states. Like Mississippi, three other states – California, New Mexico, and Oklahoma – do not have an absolute age minimum. Nearly 300,000 minors were legally married in the US between 2000 and 2018, according to Unchained At Last, a non-profit organisation endeavouring to put an end to the centuries-old practice.

You might think that everyone would support ending child marriage. But actually, Republicans across the country are trying to keep it legal. In Missouri, where Brown now lives, the state’s legislature tried to pass a bill in February that would prohibit anyone under 18 from getting a marriage licence. But Republicans in the state House objected.

Missouri state Representative Hardy Billington explained: “My opinion is that if someone [wants to] get married at 17, and they’re going to have a baby and they cannot get married, then… chances of abortion are extremely high.” The state already bans abortion in nearly all cases.