Conservatives in the Louisiana state House have rewritten a bill intended to set a minimum legal age for marriage, allowing minors to get married with parental consent, HuffPost reports.
State Rep. Pat Smith, a Democrat, backed the House version of the bill submitted by State Sen. Yvonne Colomb, a Democrat, which would set a minimum marriage age of 16, later raised to 17 after urging from Republican state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty.
The GOP legislator told The Advocate that a minimum age will prevent adults from marrying minors and “make sure we don’t have people covering up acts of rape as a marriage. This is a child protection issue.”
Smith added that she is “in awe” of the amount of opposition to a minimum marriage age bill, noting instances where teenage girls married adult men in their 30s and 40s.
“That’s not right in our state,” she said. “We need to protect our children.”
However, the bill faced stiff opposition from conservatives in the state, many of whom supported marriage among minors, and was rewritten by Republicans to allow minors to get married after undergoing a judicial review. According to the Advocate, over 4,500 minors, including one 12-year-old, were legally married from 2000 to 2010 in Louisiana.
“We want children to be born into wedlock if possible,” Republican state Rep. Nancy Landry said. “We’re discouraging that with this. If they’re both 16 or 15 and having a baby why wouldn’t we want them to get married?”
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