Judy Wiegand speaks during a House Judiciary Committee meeting in Raleigh, June 22, 2021.Photo: Ethan Hyman/The News & Observer via AP
North Carolina lawmakers are nearing passage of a bill to addressthe state’s ignoble distinctionas a regional destination for people seeking child brides, according to the Associated Press.
Proponents of the bill, including some of the now-grown women in these marriages, say it’s far overdue even as advocates argue the proposal still doesn’t go far enough.
The legislation would raise the minimum marriage age in the state from 14 to 16 and narrow the acceptable age difference between a teenager and their spouse to four years.
The state’s House approved the legislation to raise its lowest-in-the-nation marriage age earlier this month. Advocates say the bill’s advance is critical to protect young girls who are pressured into marriage with older men.
Drew Reisinger, the register of deeds in Buncombe County, told the AP that even with the law, the state will “be putting a lot of children in harm’s way.”
“We will have moved the needle and made North Carolina no longer at the very bottom of the barrel of states,” Reisinger acknowledged of the measure.
Among those who spoke in favor of the legislation, known as Senate Bill 35, was Judy Wiegand, who was married in the 1970s at the age of 13, to an older teenage boy.
After her family sought guidance from local community church leaders in Kentucky, where they lived at the time, the pair was pressed into getting married.
To legally marry, the teens crossed the border into Virginia, which until 2016 allowed children as young as 12 to get married if they were pregnant and had parental consent.
Over time, the young couple moved out on their own, with Wiegand delivering her child when she was 14 years old and then trying to get her GED before realizing she was too young to legally take the test. After her husband became violent, Wiegand left with the child, she said.
Now, she’s speaking out for those children in North Carolina who find themselves in similar situations to her own.
“I’m speaking in favor of the bill because I feel nobody did it for me,” Wiegand said in a House Judiciary Committee meeting in Raleigh on June 22, adding, “I regret I never had the opportunity to be a teenager.”
North Carolina is one of 13 states that currently allow children under the age of 16 to get legally married, according to the nonprofit group Unchained at Last.
source: people.com
