California Child Marriage Ban Faces Opposition From Planned Parenthood

With child marriage still legal in California, advocates are mounting a campaign to push the state to enact a ban, but their effort is facing surprising opposition from progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.

Dozens of survivors of forced or child marriages traveled to California's state Capitol in Sacramento last month to protest the state's existing laws. Dressed in wedding dresses with their wrists tied and mouths taped shut, they called on state lawmakers to finally outlaw the practice.

California, a solidly Democratic state, was on track to be the first to pass an absolute ban on marriages for children under 18. But the legislative proposal was met with opposition from liberal organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Children's Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The pushback comes out of concerns that imposing an age requirement could set the stage for a slippery slope when it comes to constitutional rights or reproductive choices, specifically that an age requirement could impede a minor's ability to seek an abortion.

California and Mississippi are the only two states where there is no minimum age requirement to get married. Most states have a minimum marriage age of 16 with parental consent, although it can range from as low as 14 to as high as 18, according to voting rights organization Wisevoter.

Newsweek reached out to Planned Parenthood via email for comment.

Minors seeking to wed in California need approval from a guardian and a court order. But those calling for a ban on child marriages point out that when it comes to issues like statutory rape, California's definition of unlawful sexual activity between a child and an adult does not apply if the two parties are married.

Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California spokesperson Jennifer Wonnacott told the Los Angeles Times that it "strongly supports protecting youth from abuse of all kinds" but said those protections should "not impede on the reproductive rights of minors and their ability to decide what is best for them, their health and their lives."

Fraidy Reiss, the founder of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriages in the U.S., told Newsweek that arguments suggesting a child marriage ban would impact abortion restriction were unfounded and that allowing for child marriage would be more detrimental to the victims' sexual health than not having one in place.

"The idea that banning child marriage—a human rights abuse that destroys girls' lives— might somehow undermine girls' rights is preposterous," Reiss said. "We at Unchained see again and again that child marriage survivors often lose all sexual and reproductive rights, repeatedly forced to have unprotected sex and forced to endure pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing without their consent."

An analysis from Unchained At Last found that between 2000 and 2018, 23,588 minors were married in California, making it the state with the second-highest number of child marriages behind Texas.

The state Legislature is expected to see another attempt to ban child marriage without exception early next year.

"The U.S. considers marriage under the age of 18 in foreign counties to be a human rights abuse," Assembly member Cottie Petrie Norris, a Democrat, told the Times. "The reality is this is happening in the dark corners. It is absolutely shocking and it's horrifying.

"If it's happening at all, it's too much," she said.

Update 8/7/23, 12:01 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Fraidy Reiss.