On December 16, the House rejected the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act (S. 987). The 241-166 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority of those voting required for passage of a bill under suspension of the rules, the expedited process under which the bill was considered. The Senate passed the bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), on December 1 (see The Source, 12/3/10).
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) said, “[E]very year in the world’s poorest countries, millions of girls are forced into marriage. Girls as young as age eight, but often 13, 14, and 15 years old, are sold by impoverished parents to settle debts or they are given away to become the wives of men who are years or even decades older. For a young girl, a child, to be forced into marriage to an adult man can only be described as a life of slavery, child molestation, and servitude. This is not marriage. It is a violation of the most basic human rights of a child…According to UNICEF, child marriage is ‘the most prevalent form of sexual abuse and exploitation of girls.’ One in every seven girls in the developing world is forced into marriage sometime before the age of 15, millions of girls every year. A 13-year-old that is forced into marriage will not go to school. She is most certainly guaranteed to be a victim of domestic violence. She is condemned to a lifetime of poverty, and she is more likely to die or be disabled in childbirth, and because she is a child, her infant is more likely to die. HIV infection, maternal death, child death, gender-based violence, and extreme poverty are all deadly obstacles to development that destroys families, weakens communities, and destabilizes countries. Child marriage contributes to all of these destructive problems.”
In stating his opposition to the bill, Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) said, “I rise, as do others on our side of the aisle today, as a supporter of efforts to combat child marriage in developing countries but in opposition to the Senate bill that we are considering today. I want you to know, before I make all my remarks, that I have actually seen forced child marriages in countries like Saudi Arabia firsthand. And it is a horrible thing, and I am very supportive of stopping that practice…Regrettably, the bill adopted by the Senate that we are considering today does not reflect the current fiscal realities…To achieve the policy objectives we seek, while taking into account the economic challenges and limitations our nation, our constituents are facing, this week Congresswoman [Ileana] Ros-Lehtinen [(R-FL)] introduced a bill on the prevention of child marriage [H.R. 6521], which enjoys the support of several of our colleagues in this House. That bill reflects modifications that Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen had sought to make to the Senate text before it came to the floor, but they were not accepted. Instead of the $67 million in outlays over the next five years in the Senate text before us, the provisions of that bill would have resulted in less than $1 million in potential costs.”
