Most States Still Let Kids Get Married, and the People Who Could Stop It Went on Summer Vacation

Most States Still Let Kids Get Married, and the People Who Could Stop It Went on Summer Vacation

Let me tell you something. I have four kids. My oldest is fifteen. You know what my fifteen-year-old did last weekend? She went to a friend’s pool party and ate an entire bag of Takis. She did not get married. Because she is a child. Because fifteen-year-olds are children.

But in Ohio, a fifteen-year-old girl got married. She was pregnant. And now authorities have rescued sixteen children who were confined to a single room in a home in rural Vinton County. Sixteen kids in one room. Their mother was a child bride herself. And the state of Ohio is just now going, “Huh, maybe we should look into this.”

Here is what I found when I did my own research, because nobody else is going to do it for you. Since 2018, seventeen states have banned marriage before age eighteen. Seventeen. That means thirty-three states still let minors get married if a parent or a judge signs off. Three states, California, Mississippi, and New Mexico, don’t even bother specifying a minimum age. Let that sink in. No floor. A state with no minimum marriage age is apparently fine in the year 2026.

Nearly 315,000 children under eighteen were legally wed in this country between 2000 and 2021. Most of them girls married to adult men. I’m going to say that again. Three hundred and fifteen thousand children. Married. To adults. Legally. With paperwork and everything.

Now, two Ohio state senators, one Democrat and one Republican, actually introduced a bill to set the minimum marriage age at eighteen. It passed out of committee in June. And then the full Senate did not vote on it before they adjourned for the summer. They went home. They left. Child marriage is still legal in Ohio and they went on vacation. I have questions for the manager.

Ruhrfisch and Nyttend (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

And the opposition to fixing this? You’re going to love this. In Oklahoma, where a Republican-sponsored ban finally passed the House by a single vote, some Republican lawmakers called it “government overreach.” One said it would increase the number of babies born out of wedlock. A Missouri Republican said banning child marriage would lead to more abortions. I’m reading this with my own two eyes. They are arguing that the solution to teen pregnancy is to let the teenager get married. To an adult. Instead of, I don’t know, protecting the child.

Oklahoma state Rep. Michelle McCane told her colleagues she gave birth at fifteen and that her life would have been ruined if her mother had let her marry the person she picked in eighth grade. She pointed out that married minors cannot legally file for divorce or even check into a domestic violence shelter. A child who gets married loses the legal tools to leave. That is not a marriage. That is a trap.

And here’s the kicker. Back in 2017, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood actually opposed a California bill to ban marriage before eighteen, calling it an intrusion on the fundamental rights of marriage. The fundamental rights of a child to marry an adult. I’m sure that plays great in the group chat.

Seventeen states have figured this out. Thirty-three have not. The Ohio bill sits in limbo because summer break was more important. California has a bill moving now. Congress has the Child Marriage Prevention Act sitting there collecting dust. Every single state needs to set eighteen as the minimum with no exceptions. This is not complicated. You don’t need a committee. You don’t need a study. You need to stop letting children marry adults and go home.

I have four kids. I know what a child looks like. So do they. They just don’t care.