Child Marriage Doesn’t Actually Happen Here, Right?
Why is it so hard to end child marriage in America?
In 1762, North Carolina’s colonial governor, Arthur Dobbs, married his second wife, 15-year-old Justina Davis. He was 73. It’s easy to feel some combination of revulsion for Mr. Dobbs, pity for Ms. Davis or, likely, a sense of relief that times have changed.
Except they haven’t. Almost 260 years later, North Carolina still allows pregnant and parenting children to marry as young as 14 with a court order, sometimes in direct opposition to a state statutory rape law, which criminalizes sex with a person age 15 or under, with few exceptions.
The state’s House of Representatives is considering a bill, which would increase the minimum age of marriage to 16 and cap age gaps with 16- or 17-year-old spouses at four years. The bill that was originally introduced would have set the marriage age at 18, with no exceptions, but the process of getting even this far has been fraught and revealed surprising opposition.
That North Carolina, my home state, is tied with Alaska for the nation’s lowest legal age of marriage (though there are some states that fail to specify age floors in law, where even younger children can marry) comes as a shock to most North Carolinians. We often think of child marriage as a problem that’s over there — something affecting other countries — or long ago — between people of our parents’ or grandparents’ generations.
Indeed, when I first spoke to North Carolinian leaders and advocates of women and children’s rights in 2018 about the prospect of studying rates of child marriage in the state, many were skeptical as to why. Surely this was just an old law on the books?
This sense of exceptionalism has left this issue understudied. In a 2017 investigation, PBS’s “Frontline” could not access data from six states — mine included — on how often child marriage occurs or among whom.
Last year, my organization, the International Center for Research on Women, compiled the first-ever comprehensive child-marriage estimates for North Carolina and found that thousands of adults have been granted licenses to marry children in the state. This research was our first investigation of child marriage in the United States, after over a decade of work on this issue around the world, where approximately 12 million girls marry below the age of 18 each year.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Social Evils
Where are India's millions of missing girls?
Published 23 May 2011
India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explores what has led to this crisis.
Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.
In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times.
Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.
"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."
Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.
Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.
"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.
India outlawed dowries in 1961, but the practice remains rampant and the value of dowries is constantly growing, affecting rich and poor alike.
Kulwant's husband died three years after the birth of their son. "It was the curse of the daughters we killed. That's why he died so young," she says.
Common attitude
Her neighbour Rekha is mother of a chubby three-year-old girl.
Last September, when she became pregnant again, her mother-in-law forced her to undergo an abortion after an ultrasound showed that she was pregnant with twin girls.
"I said there's no difference between girls and boys. But here they think differently. There's no happiness when a girl is born. They say the son will carry forward our lineage, but the daughter will get married and go off to another family."
Kulwant and Rekha live in Sagarpur, a lower middle-class area in south-west Delhi.
Here, narrow minds live in homes separated by narrow lanes.
The women's story is common and repeated in millions of homes across India, and it has been getting worse.
In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls.
Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China.
Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children.
But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide.
The government has been forced to admit that its strategy has failed to put an end to female foeticide.
'National shame'
"Whatever measures have been put in over the past 40 years have not had any impact on the child sex ratio," Home Secretary GK Pillai said when the census report was released.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described female foeticide and infanticide as a "national shame" and called for a "crusade" to save girl babies.
But Sabu George, India's best-known campaigner on the issue, says the government has so far shown little determination to stop the practices.
Until 30 years ago, he says, India's sex ratio was "reasonable". Then in 1974, Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women.
It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.
"By late 80s, every newspaper in Delhi was advertising for ultrasound sex determination," said Mr George.
"Clinics from Punjab were boasting that they had 10 years' experience in eliminating girl children and inviting parents to come to them."
In 1994, the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.
Abortion is generally legal up to 12 weeks' gestation. Sex can be determined by a scan from about 14 weeks.
"What is needed is a strict implementation of the law," says Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi. "I find there's absolutely no will on the part of the government to stop this."
Today, there are 40,000 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, and many more exist without any record.
'Really sad'
Ms Joshi, a former district commissioner of south-west Delhi, says there are dozens of ultrasound clinics in the area. It has the worst child sex ratio in the capital - 836 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
Delhi's overall ratio is not much better at 866 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
"It's really sad. We are the capital of the country and we have such a poor ratio," Ms Joshi says.
The south-west district shares its boundary with Punjab and Haryana, the two Indian states with the worst sex ratios.
Since the last census, Punjab and Haryana have shown a slight improvement. But Delhi has registered a decline.
"Something's really wrong here and something has to be done to put things right," Ms Joshi says.
Almost all the ultrasound clinics in the area have the mandatory board outside, proclaiming that they do not carry out illegal sex-determination tests.
But the women in Sagarpur say most people here know where to go when they need an ultrasound or an abortion.
They say anyone who wants to get a foetal ultrasound done, gets it done. In the five-star clinics of south Delhi it costs 10,000-plus rupees ($222; £135), In the remote peripheral areas of Delhi's border, it costs a few hundred rupees.
Similarly, the costs vary for those wanting an illegal abortion.
Delhi is not alone in its anti-girl bias. Sex ratios have declined in 17 states in the past decade, with the biggest falls registered in Jammu and Kashmir.
Ms Joshi says most offenders are members of the growing middle-class and affluent Indians - they are aware that the technology exists and have the means to pay to find out the sex of their baby and abort if they choose.
"We have to take effective steps to control the promotion of sex determination by the medical community. And file cases against doctors who do it," Mr George says.
"Otherwise by 2021, we are frightened to think what it will be like."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13264301
Published 23 May 2011
India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explores what has led to this crisis.
Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.
In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times.
Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.
"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."
Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.
Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.
"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.
India outlawed dowries in 1961, but the practice remains rampant and the value of dowries is constantly growing, affecting rich and poor alike.
Kulwant's husband died three years after the birth of their son. "It was the curse of the daughters we killed. That's why he died so young," she says.
Common attitude
Her neighbour Rekha is mother of a chubby three-year-old girl.
Last September, when she became pregnant again, her mother-in-law forced her to undergo an abortion after an ultrasound showed that she was pregnant with twin girls.
"I said there's no difference between girls and boys. But here they think differently. There's no happiness when a girl is born. They say the son will carry forward our lineage, but the daughter will get married and go off to another family."
Kulwant and Rekha live in Sagarpur, a lower middle-class area in south-west Delhi.
Here, narrow minds live in homes separated by narrow lanes.
The women's story is common and repeated in millions of homes across India, and it has been getting worse.
In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls.
Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China.
Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children.
But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide.
The government has been forced to admit that its strategy has failed to put an end to female foeticide.
'National shame'
"Whatever measures have been put in over the past 40 years have not had any impact on the child sex ratio," Home Secretary GK Pillai said when the census report was released.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described female foeticide and infanticide as a "national shame" and called for a "crusade" to save girl babies.
But Sabu George, India's best-known campaigner on the issue, says the government has so far shown little determination to stop the practices.
Until 30 years ago, he says, India's sex ratio was "reasonable". Then in 1974, Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women.
It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.
"By late 80s, every newspaper in Delhi was advertising for ultrasound sex determination," said Mr George.
"Clinics from Punjab were boasting that they had 10 years' experience in eliminating girl children and inviting parents to come to them."
In 1994, the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.
Abortion is generally legal up to 12 weeks' gestation. Sex can be determined by a scan from about 14 weeks.
"What is needed is a strict implementation of the law," says Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi. "I find there's absolutely no will on the part of the government to stop this."
Today, there are 40,000 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, and many more exist without any record.
'Really sad'
Ms Joshi, a former district commissioner of south-west Delhi, says there are dozens of ultrasound clinics in the area. It has the worst child sex ratio in the capital - 836 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
Delhi's overall ratio is not much better at 866 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
"It's really sad. We are the capital of the country and we have such a poor ratio," Ms Joshi says.
The south-west district shares its boundary with Punjab and Haryana, the two Indian states with the worst sex ratios.
Since the last census, Punjab and Haryana have shown a slight improvement. But Delhi has registered a decline.
"Something's really wrong here and something has to be done to put things right," Ms Joshi says.
Almost all the ultrasound clinics in the area have the mandatory board outside, proclaiming that they do not carry out illegal sex-determination tests.
But the women in Sagarpur say most people here know where to go when they need an ultrasound or an abortion.
They say anyone who wants to get a foetal ultrasound done, gets it done. In the five-star clinics of south Delhi it costs 10,000-plus rupees ($222; £135), In the remote peripheral areas of Delhi's border, it costs a few hundred rupees.
Similarly, the costs vary for those wanting an illegal abortion.
Delhi is not alone in its anti-girl bias. Sex ratios have declined in 17 states in the past decade, with the biggest falls registered in Jammu and Kashmir.
Ms Joshi says most offenders are members of the growing middle-class and affluent Indians - they are aware that the technology exists and have the means to pay to find out the sex of their baby and abort if they choose.
"We have to take effective steps to control the promotion of sex determination by the medical community. And file cases against doctors who do it," Mr George says.
"Otherwise by 2021, we are frightened to think what it will be like."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13264301
The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness
By Christine Emba
Ms. Emba is the author of “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation” and a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times.
These days, virality is difficult to achieve. But the British OnlyFans creator Lily Phillips managed it this winter, when she appeared in a documentary titled “I Slept With 100 Men in One Day.”
The film (available on YouTube in an edited form and unexpurgated on OnlyFans) followed Ms. Phillips as she planned for and executed the titular stunt, capturing everything from the shuffling feet of the men waiting outside her rented Airbnb to her shaken visage in the aftermath of the deed. (“It’s not for the weak girls,” she tells the filmmaker Josh Pieters, with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know if I’d recommend it.”)
Excessive? Certainly. Off-putting? To some. But perhaps not unexpected, if one considers how inured American society has become to women’s sexualization and objectification — so much so that extremism seems like one of the few ways for an ambitious young sex worker to stand out.
Pornography floods the internet. A 2023 report from Brigham Young University estimated that pornography could be found on 12 percent of websites. Porn bots regularly surface on X, on Instagram, in comment sections and in unsolicited direct messages. Defenders of pornography tend to cite the existence of ethical porn, but that isn’t what a majority of users are watching. “The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog,” one teenager wrote in 2023 in The Free Press, and it often has a focus on violence and dehumanization of women. And the sites that supply it aren’t concerned with ethics, either. In a column last week, Nick Kristof exposed how Pornhub and its related sites profit off videos of child rape.
There are consequences for members of Gen Z, in particular, the first to grow up alongside unlimited and always accessible porn and have their first experiences of sex shaped and mediated by it. It’s hard not to see a connection between porn-trained behaviors — the choking, slapping and spitting that have become the norm even in early sexual encounters — and young women’s distrust in young men. And in the future, porn will become only more addictive and effective as a teacher, as virtual reality makes it more immersive and artificial intelligence allows it to be customizable. (For a foretaste of where this might end up, you can read a recent essay by Aella, a researcher and sex worker, on Substack defending A.I. child porn.)
In her new book “Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves,” Sophie Gilbert critiques the mass culture of the 1990s and 2000s, noting how it was built on female objectification and hyperexposure. A generation of women, she explains, were persuaded by the ideas that bodies were commodities to be molded, surveilled, fetishized or made the butt of the joke, that sexual power, which might give some fleeting leverage, was the only power worth having. This lie curdled the emerging promise of 20th-century feminism, and as our ambitions shrank, the potential for exploitation grew.
Ms. Gilbert has a talent for pinpointing moments that, in hindsight, signal a change: when the “ferocious activist energy” of the Riot Grrrl movement was supplanted by the Spice Girls’ sexy, consumerist pop; when grown-up, self-assured supermodels are pushed off magazine covers in favor of easily manipulated waifs; when reality television and paparazzi hounds made self-exposure (willing or unwilling) the norm.
And she’s clear about the thread that runs through it all: the rise of easy-to-access hard-core pornography, which “trained a good amount of our popular culture,” she writes, “to see women as objects — as things to silence, restrain, fetishize or brutalize. And it’s helped train women, too.”
But while Ms. Gilbert is unsparing in her descriptions of pornography’s warping effect on culture and its consumers, she’s curiously reluctant to acknowledge what seems obvious: Porn hasn’t been good for us. While her descriptions of the cultural landscape imply that the mainstreaming of hard-core porn has been a bad thing, she pulls her punches.
“I’m not interested in kink-shaming,” she writes, “and I’m not remotely opposed to porn” — immediately after describing a 2019 study that found that 38 percent of British women under 40 reported having experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during sex. That data point comes at the tail end of a chapter that draws a disturbing and convincing line from the emergence and popularization of violent, extreme pornography in the late 1990s to the photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib in 2004 of prisoners being sexually humiliated.
But in its reluctance to acknowledge what the evidence suggests, “Girl on Girl” is not unusual. Despite significant evidence that a deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society, there is a curious refusal, especially in progressive circles, to publicly admit disapproval of porn.
Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded. There’s a dread of seeming prudish, boring, uncool — perhaps a hangover from the cultural takeover that Ms. Gilbert so thoroughly details. More generously, there’s a desire not to indict the choices of individuals (women or men) who create sexual content out of need or personal desire or allow legislation to harm those who depend on it to survive.
But a lack of judgment sometimes comes at the expense of discernment. As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart. We want to prove that we’re chill and modern, skip the inevitable haggling over boundaries and regulation and avoid potentially placing limits on our behavior. But we aren’t paying attention to how we’re making things worse for ourselves. Ms. Phillips’s case is one example of how normalization of pornographic extremes has made even lurid acts de rigueur; it’s not hard to imagine a future that asks (and offers) more than we can imagine today.
Most recently, the only people who seem willing to openly criticize the widespread availability of pornography tend to be right-leaning or religious and so are instantly discounted — often by being disparaged as such. But cracks are beginning to appear in the wall, as shown by sources as varied as the recent, if quiet, revival of the anti-porn feminist Andrea Dworkin (Picador books rereleased a trio of her most famous works this winter) and the heartfelt podcasts of Theo Von, who frequently discusses his decision to stop watching porn.
And members of Gen Z seem more willing to openly criticize it than their careful elders. The Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan, whom Ms. Gilbert quotes in the introduction to “Girl on Girl,” notes this in her 2021 essay “Talking to My Students About Porn”: “Does porn bear responsibility for the objectification of women, for the marginalization of women, for sexual violence against women? Yes, they said, yes to all of it.” In my own experience speaking to college students and young adults, they’re dismayed and discouraged by the role pornography has played in their sexual formation. In their eyes, it colors everything.
“I wanted to understand how a generation of young women came to believe that sex was our currency, our objectification was empowering,” Ms. Gilbert writes. “Why were we so easily persuaded of our own inadequacy? Who was setting the agenda?”
The thing is, we all know. Perhaps we should be so gauche — or brave — as to simply admit it.
More on culture and pornography
Opinion | Nicholas Kristof
These Internal Documents Show Why We Shouldn’t Trust Porn Companieshttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/opinion/porn ... ments.html
May 10, 2025
Opinion | Nicholas Kristof
The Online Degradation of Women and Girls That We Meet With a Shrughttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/23/opinion/deep ... ideos.html
March 23, 2024
Opinion | Polly Barton
My Year of Talking About Porn https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opin ... tions.html
March 10, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opin ... e9677ea768
Re: Social Evils
Sr. Marie-Agnes Suwanna Buasap is a member of the Talitha Kum anti-human trafficking network. Photo: Sr. Marie-Agnes S. Buasap, SPC
Catholic religious sister receives top anti-human trafficking award in Thailand
A Thai Catholic religious sister, known for her groundbreaking grassroots initiatives to combat human trafficking, has received national recognition for her work with vulnerable communities in Thailand's remote northern regions.
By Chainarong Monthienvichienchai, LiCAS News
Sr. Marie-Agnes Suwanna Buasap of the Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres was honored by Thailand’s Ministry of Social Development and Human Security during a ceremony in Bangkok on June 5, marked as National Anti-Human Trafficking Day.
The award commends her “courageous, creative, and sustained” efforts in addressing trafficking, particularly among women and children living in high-risk areas.
The event gathered representatives from faith-based and secular groups across Thailand working to fight human trafficking.
Among the honorees was Stella Maris, the seafarers’ ministry of the Chanthaburi Diocese, which collaborates with maritime networks and local officials to rescue and support trafficked fishers and seafarers.
Sr. Marie-Agnes Suwanna Buasap receives a national award for her anti-human trafficking work during a ceremony in Bangkok. Photo courtesy: Sr. Marie-Agnes S. Buasap, SPC
In an interview with LiCAS News, Sr. Marie-Agnes underlined the need to reach society’s most vulnerable with hope and concrete action—especially during the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year 2025.
“This Jubilee Year, we are called to be Pilgrims of Hope—bringing hope to those living on the margins, especially young women at risk of exploitation,” she said. “To fight trafficking, we must become deeply integrated in the communities we serve. Building trust is essential.”
Her anti-trafficking approach is rooted in education, empowerment, and community-based leadership. Her initiatives include:
- Training 3,182 teachers across 35 schools to deliver anti-trafficking education, reaching more than 60,000 students.
- Supporting youth-led awareness campaigns in northern border regions.
- Establishing Talitha Kum Kids networks in schools to build long-term advocacy.
- Launching livelihood programs for women in three northern villages, including the production of chili-based products to increase family income.
- Deploying 40 Talitha Kum volunteers to lead workshops for more than 800 women, focusing on awareness, skills development, and community resilience.
The Talitha Kum movement—named after Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Mark, “Maiden, I say to you, arise”—is a global network of women religious fighting human trafficking. Founded in 2009 by the International Union of Superiors General, the network is active in over 90 countries.
Sr. Marie-Agnes acknowledged the support of her congregation and the wider Church in sustaining the mission. “This work is never done alone,” she said. “It’s the fruit of shared commitment, faith, and compassion.”
Her efforts come amid a global slowdown in anti-trafficking enforcement. The United Nations reported that in 2020, trafficking-related crime detection fell by 11%, while convictions dropped by 27%—a decline most visible in developing nations.
Sr. Marie-Agnes’s national award stands as a testament to the power of faith-driven grassroots action in confronting one of the world’s most persistent human rights challenges.
This article was originally published on https://www.licas.news/. All rights reserved. Unauthorized republication by third parties is not permitted.
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