Republican who got married at 15 sponsors bill to ban child marriage in Missouri

A Republican state senator who was married at the age of 15 is sponsoring a bill that seeks to outlaw child marriage in Missouri.

Speaking to Newsweek Friday, Holly Thompson Rehder (R-MO) said she married her 21-year-old boyfriend at 15 because she wanted a way out of an abusive home.

"As I got older, I started realizing I wasn't old enough to make that decision. My life would have been on a much better path had I actually toughed it out, had I stayed in high school, not gotten married, finished high school," Thompson Rehder said.

The bill would make it illegal to issue marriage licenses to anyone under 18 under any circumstances in the state. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to marry with parental consent, although minors are not allowed to marry anyone 21 or older.

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Marriage before the age of 18 was legal in all states until 2017. If the bill is passed, Missouri will be among 10 states that have now banned it. Another eight states are considering a ban, Newsweek reported.

"Seeing a state like Missouri pass [a child marriage ban] will be, not just encouraging to these other states, but will absolutely show, 'Hey, Missouri, did it. We can do this, too,'" she said.

"Now, we have all these statistics showing that girls who wait until they're an adult to get married have much better rates of success," Thompson Rehder said. "Anything you can do at 17, you can do it at 18, It's not going to hurt to wait another year, but it can make a huge difference in your decision-making and what you feel is best for you."

While opponents of child marriage bans cite religious freedoms or parental rights, Thompson Rehder argued that if her state has already set an age limit, "Why not set it at 18?"

"We're already setting the timeframe, so let's set that timeframe to when we don't have children getting married," she said. "Because anyone under 18 is a child."