JEFFERSON CITY 鈥 The Missouri Senate voted Thursday to end child marriage in the state.
Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds can get married with parental approval. Minors cannot get married to someone over 21.
Under the legislation, only those 18 and older can get married.
Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, the bill鈥檚 sponsor, said the policy was important to prevent parents from allowing their children to be married to noncitizens to create a pathway to citizenship.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 want Missouri kids to be trafficked for their citizenship,鈥 McCreery said.
, a nonprofit dedicated to ending child marriage, ranked Missouri 16th out of all 50 states in the amount of child marriages per capita. Unchained At Last also found that nearly 9,000 marriages between a child and a noncitizen were approved in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017. In 95% of those cases, the minor was a girl. From 2011 to 2018, 78% of child marriages were between a minor girl and an adult man.
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McCreery called ending child marriage a 鈥渕oral鈥 imperative, citing the poor track record underage marriages have.
The legislation passed the Senate 32-1, with only Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, dissenting. It now heads to the House for final approval.
Efforts to end child marriage have failed in prior years amid conservative pushback. Last year, after the Senate passed a nearly identical bill to the one this year, it never got a House vote.
One House member against the plan, Rep. Dean VanSchoiack, R-Savannah, told the Kansas City Star that he knows people who got married as minors, including a woman at roughly age 17.
The couple, he said, is 鈥渟till madly in love with each other.鈥
Another opponent, Rep. Hardy Billington, R-Poplar Bluff, said the change could cause pregnant teenagers to have abortions when they can鈥檛 get married.
Some Republicans have been moved from opposition to support as legislation has been considered year after year.
Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, has previously opposed the change because some members of his extended family had been married at early ages.
鈥淚 was on the other side years ago. But we鈥檙e not there today,鈥 Brattin said. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 yesteryear.鈥
The legislation is Sena
