Excerpted from the California Health Report
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett
People married as children or teens are more likely to experience domestic violence, contract sexually transmitted infections, have early pregnancies, and end up divorced, research shows. As a result, the American Medical Association has called for state and federal legislation to end child marriage. Marriage under 18 also contradicts age of consent laws in many states, essentially giving people who commit statutory rape a “get out of jail free” card in the form of a marriage license, advocates contend. California’s legal age of consent is 18.
“While we like to think of California as always leading, always being in front of the trend line, this really, really is an area where we are failing to lead and where we are failing California girls,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, author of a stalled bill this year that would have strengthened requirements on counties to report child marriages.
“Our United States government considers marriages under age 18 in foreign countries to be a human rights abuse. If we agree with that assessment, we’ve got to commit to ending a human rights abuse here in our state,” she added.