How old do you have to be to get married in Pennsylvania? Twenty-one? Sixteen? Fourteen?

Actually there is no minimum age. But legislation that won unanimous approval by the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday seeks to change that by setting 18 as the minimum age to marry in the commonwealth.

House Bill 360, sponsored by Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford County, now moves to the full House for consideration. A similar bill offered by Sen. John Sabatina, D-Philadelphia, awaits action in the Senate.

Unchained at Last, a national organization dedicated to ending child marriage, estimates nearly a quarter million of girls under 18 were coerced into marriage between 2000 and 2010. U.S. Census data shows that, as of 2014, an estimated 2,323 children age 15 to 17 living in Pennsylvania had already been married. Oftentimes, it’s adult men these girls are marrying.

Unchained at Last has been successful in getting laws passed setting 18 as the minimum marrying age in Delaware and New Jersey. The group’s founder, Fraidy Reiss of Westfield, N.J., is on a mission to get the rest of the states to follow suit.

But on Tuesday, she was in Harrisburg with her focus on getting Pennsylvania to become the next state or one of the next ones.

“Child marriage remains a real problem here in Pennsylvania because the laws are so weak here,” Reiss said, following the committee’s passage of the legislation. “A 2-year-old technically could marry. A middle school child is allowed to marry here. HB360 is a really strong bill that would eliminate what the U.S. State Department calls a human rights abuse.”

Topper confessed ending child marriage wasn’t on his radar when he ran for his House seat. But now he has come to see it as a child protection issue that demands redress.

“These are children with very limited rights in many different ways and those rights do not expand when they are forced or coerced into a marriage of some kind,” Topper told the committee members.

The way to address it, he said, is to eliminate the two exceptions that exist in state law that allow a minor to marry. Currently, those under 18 can marry with a custodial parent or guardian’s consent and those under 16, can marry if a judge thinks it’s in the marriage license applicants’ best interest and with parental consent.

Rep. Dan Miller, D-Allegheny County, called the bill establishing 18 as the minimum age without exception as “close to a no brainer as you can get.”

He pointed out minors are not allowed to contract for cellphone service so he was hard-pressed to believe that there should be exception for “such a life-altering decision at such an age.”

Gov. Tom Wolf supports the legislation.

A class of students from a suburban Pittsburgh high school attending the committee meeting have been lobbying lawmakers to pass this bill. The issue was brought to their attention by student Alex Roberts who reported on it to her Women in History and Literature class.

“At first we thought we’d be hearing about it being an issue on the international scene but it turns out to be a big issue in our country and in our own state,” said history teacher Leah Humes, who co-teaches the class at Upper Saint Clair High School with literature teacher Daniela Buccilli.

As the class began digging into the issue, Humes said they learned that girls who marry before 18 – often from extremist religious factions – experienced higher incidence of domestic abuse, economic exploitation, and their education basically came to a halt. She said they tend to become ostracized by their family and religious communities if they try to get out of their marriage.

Then, the class learned legislation had been introduced to address this issue in Pennsylvania and that’s when the teachers decided to turn this into a civic engagement exercise. They had students write letters to distribute to lawmakers and gathering signatures on petitions to make 18 the minimum age to marry.

Rep. Natalie Mihalek, R-Allegheny County, credited the class with bringing it to her attention, prompting her to do her own research into the issue that she described as appalling.

While some might argue that there are certain situations where exceptions might be warranted, Topper pointed out that maturity or circumstances aren’t used to determine age in other laws. For instance, it doesn’t matter how mature someone is when it comes to voting. You must be 18 to vote. Or when it comes to getting a driver’s license, you must be 16.

Topper said, “I really think something as vital, as important to our communities and to certainly our way of life, as marriage and how life altering that can be, I believe that is one of those cases where regardless of the hypothetical, the age must be the determining factor.”

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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