Why are some Republican lawmakers wary of preserving child marriage?

Holly Thompson Rehder she was a sophomore when she dropped out of high school and married her 21-year-old boyfriend. Today, she's a GOP state senator and the sponsor of a bill that would ban child marriage in Missouri — a bill she was surprised to see blocked by her Republican colleagues who argue there's nothing wrong with the practice.

“I know first hand. I got married at 15. My sister got married at 16. My cousin got married at 16,” says Rehder. “I understand how a teenage girl getting married is detrimental to her life and sometimes that's hard for others who haven't seen it up close and personal to understand.”

Marriage is currently legal in Missouri at age 16 with the consent of at least one parent. This is a relatively recent development: Missouri lawmakers only banned the marriage of children 14 or younger in 2018. Fifty lawmakers — 38 Republicans and two Democrats — voted against the bill at that time. Prior to the passage of the 2018 legislation, Missouri had one of the loosest restrictions on child marriage in the country, which some argued made the state a haven for sex trafficking.

Rehder, along with state Sen. Lauren Arthur (D), introduced a bill that would ban marriage for anyone under 18. The bill, which passed the GOP-controlled Senate 31-1 earlier this year, has been delayed in the House — the Government Efficiency and Shrinkage Committee, specifically — where half of the committee's 14 members opposed it.

Among the bill's opponents is Rep. Hardy Billington (R), who told the Kansas City Star believes ending child marriage in Missouri would encourage abortion. “My opinion is that if someone [wants to] they get married at 17, and they're going to have a baby, and they can't get married, then … the chances of an abortion are extremely high,” Billington said. (Missouri prohibits abortion at any stage unless the life of the pregnant woman is at risk.)

That argument — that child marriage should be preserved to prevent abortion — appears to be gaining currency with Republicans across the country as they consider laws that raise the marriage age.

The United States has no federal law setting the age of marriage. The marriage age is set by the states and only 12 of them have banned child marriage. (These states: Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.)

ONE Study 2021 by the advocacy group Unchained at Last found that 300,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2018 in the United States. According to the group, 60,000 of those marriages involved an age difference that would otherwise be considered a sex crime.

The vast majority of these minors were 16 or 17 years old, and most were girls married to adult men who were an average of four years older than them. There were five documented cases of children only 10 married in the US during the period studied.

Several state legislatures have recently considered bills that would raise the marriage age — but they have been opposed by Republican men who often cite abortion as a cause.

On the floor of the New Hampshire House last week, state Rep. Jess Edwards (R) he argued against raising the marriage age from 16 to 18, asking whether a law preventing people of “mature, childbearing age” from marrying would thereby make “abortion a much more desirable alternative” to pregnancy outside of marriage. The bill, which had already passed the Senate unanimously, narrowly passed the House, with 192 votes in favor and 174 against. It now awaits Republican Gov. Chris Sununu's signature.

Last year in West Virginia, a bill that would have raised the minimum age to obtain a marriage license passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming support, but was defeated in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Among the bill's opponents was Republican state Sen. Mike Stewart, who shared that his mother married at age 16 and gave birth to him six months later. “I'm the luckiest guy in the world,” he said. The proposal, which raised the age of marriage to 16 with parental consent, was eventually resurrected and signed into law.

In Wyoming last year, when state lawmakers were considering a bill to raise the minimum marriage age to 16, the GOP sent out an email citing talking points from the faith-based group Capitol Watch for Wyoming Families which he supported: “Because young men and women may be physically able to bear and bear children before the age of 16, marriage MUST remain open to them for the sake of those children.” (The bill eventually passed.)

Rehder, of Missouri, who became pregnant shortly after getting married at age 15, doesn't buy that argument. “I think there is no correlation” between child marriage and abortion, she says. “As a woman who was married at 15, who was pregnant at 15, you're either pro-life or pro-choice. Your marital status has nothing to do with being pro-life or pro-choice.”

Anything else Rayder won't accept? The possibility of her legislation dying in committee. While the bill that would raise the marriage age to 18 remains deadlocked with a week left in the legislative session, Rehder — who is currently running for lieutenant governor — has a plan to see it passed next week.

“I'm persistent and I don't give up until the last bell rings,” says Rehder. “I have a bill that I am working on [about] sex trafficking and foster child benefits. I have moved it in the House and am working to try to get that marriage age language added [as an amendment] in this.”

Rehder expects the bill, which has already passed committee, to come to the House floor on Monday, where she believes it can succeed. By offering it as an amendment on the floor, she says, “it will give us a bigger pool of votes to draw from and more women who will vote for it,” she says. “I hope we can still do that.”