By Guy Page, Vermont Daily Chronicle

Marriage at age 16 or 17 is child abuse, or a similar harmful activity, more than a dozen opponents of under-18 child marriage have testified about H148, raising the legal age to marry to 18.

Sponsored by Representative Carol Ode of Burlington and co-sponsored by Mollie Burke, Tiffany Bluemle, and Sara Coffey, H148 will be under House Judiciary Committee review this afternoon. The bill is likely to be voted on this Friday, a committee member said.

The bill removes the parental consent clause for 16 and 17 year-olds to marry. Instead, it prohibits all marriages under 18. Critics say children must be legally protected from consequences of abuse, economic privation, and divorce. Some critics liken under-age marriage to child sexual assault.

On February 16, 13 separate written testimonies were entered into the committee record in support of H148, including:

The Justice of the Peace Association: “H148 will protect all children in the state of Vermont from the dangers of child marriage.” The JPUS and other organizations argue that girls, in particular, are more likely to suffer physical and economic harm if they marry under age 18. Child marriage devastates girls’ lives. It destroys their health, education, and economic opportunities, and increases their risk of experiencing violence. In fact, the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse,’” JPUS said.

Protect Our Defenders, said young soldiers should not be allowed to marry high school sweethearts to make them eligible for survivor benefits: “When it came to our attention that some lawmakers have resisted ending child marriage so that an active duty service member might be able to marry a child for the child to be able to benefit from spousal death benefits, we were left deeply shaken. The military has a crisis on its hands in the form of sexual assault, which has been acknowledged by the Secretary of Defense, military leaders such as General Mark Milley, and the Commander in Chief, President Joe Biden.

Educator/mental health worker Pamela Williams of Chittenden County raised the spectre of child trafficking: “This concerns legal rights; a child cannot retain an attorney, access domestic violence shelters or sign a lease for a rental residence. We do not want Vermont to become the destination for child traffickers to further their control over their victims.”

The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation says H148 will protect girls from coerced marriages. Under current law, “there is no mechanism to ensure that the parental ‘consent’ required to enter minors into marriage is not, in fact, parental coercion. Children who have not yet reached the age of majority can easily be forced or coerced into marriage or trapped in an abusive marriage.”

Champlain Valley Amnesty International equates under-18 marriage with being forced into adulthood. “Even though this occurrence [forced marriages] might not be of epic proportions in Vermont, there is a concern that these young girls are forced into adulthood before they are physically and mentally ready.”

Marguerite Adelman of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom says girls who marry under 18 are more likely to have five or more children, less likely to finish high school, and more likely to live in poverty. She says the United Nations has declared underage marriage as a human rights violation.

Less than 300 Vermonters under 18 married last year, the American Atheists noted. But “80%

of those marriages were girls married to adult men. In other words, this loophole has allowed

criminal conduct against children in Vermont, and it must be closed immediately.”

A coalition of U.S. state lawmakers addressed the pregnancy argument. “But what if a girl is pregnant, some will ask you. Let them know we would be harming, not helping, if we married off pregnant girls. Teen mothers in the U.S. who marry are more likely to suffer economic deprivation and instability than teen mothers who stay single.”

These lawmakers also invoked a U.N. initiative: “Under United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5.3, the U.S. joined 192 other countries in promising to end child marriage by year 2030. We have achieved that goal in six states so far, despite initial resistance from our colleagues.”

To date, no-one has testified in opposition to H.148. One House member did refer to the ‘double standard’ of legally preventing youth choices based on perceived harmful behavior.

House Judiciary members and the committee assistant can be contacted to provide opinions and/or testimony.