Summary
Colombia has banned child marriage after 17 years of advocacy and eight failed legislative attempts, closing a 137-year legal loophole that allowed minors to marry with parental consent or cohabit as informal spouses.
The new law, “They are Girls, Not Wives,” aligns Colombia with international standards and makes it one of 12 Latin American countries to entirely prohibit marriage under 18.
Advocacy groups celebrated the historic victory but emphasized the need for policies addressing poverty, machismo, and systemic inequalities that fuel child marriage, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities.
My first thought was what’s up with California?
I could find a bunch of articles talking about the usual stuff like conservatives and evangelicals arguing in favor of avoiding a ban, but Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are also frequent supporters of avoiding a ban on child marriage. The only reasoning I could find was “we don’t have enough data,” but I’m struggling to think of any positive things about allowing it. From the articles, it sounded like fringe religious beliefs and questionable things regarding immigration laws, but I am skeptical the pros of allowing child marriage for those outweigh a number of cons I could name.
I wasn’t able to find any actual articles from PP or ACLU themselves about it, so does anyone have any insight? This seems a bit out of character for both orgs.
I mean… there have been some regrettable cases in Germany directly after the law declaring foreign sub-18 marriage to be invalid, like 16/18yold asylum seeker couples getting separated. There’s a difference between saying “we don’t recognise that, you’ll have to marry again under German law” and “we’re putting you in two different accommodations in two different states because you can’t possibly be a family unit and that’s how the dice fell”. You can’t just blindly assume they’re not heads over heels for each other, no matter how arranged and young the marriage was, you have to look at the individual case and if everything checks out treat them eg. analogous to siblings when it comes to accommodation.
It looks like they tried to change it in 2017 and the bill got compromised down to some safeguards that don’t amount to much.
I found some articles characterizing ACLU’s position as viewing it as a slippery slope to taking away access to abortion or other reproductive healthcare. I get why that kind of thing is something they’re worried about, but I really don’t see how it applies in this situation.
It’s still causing harm, and I really don’t see who it’s helping. Pair the law with strong protections for reproductive rights for people of all ages, maybe even as a proposition. It’d probably be pretty popular, though I also expected the proposition to ban prison slavery to be popular too.
I saw the mention of it protecting abortion rights, but I was confused about that because as far as I know, nowhere requires someone to be married for abortions or any type of healthcare.
The quotes and comments I saw made it sound like the stance was this doesnt happen enough we should risk losing any rights unnecessarily, but I feel there should have been some specifics mentions what those rights they’re protecting actually were. The stats seem all over the place too, from as low as IIRC around 50 child marriages since 2019 to an estimated 1600.
This all seems like something people should have some real facts and figures on, but that I cant find them is really raising my eyebrows for a number of reasons.