JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — After falling short during session last year, there’s a new bipartisan push to ban child marriage in Missouri. 

Right now, in Missouri, 16- and 17-year-olds can get married to anyone under 21 if they have parental consent. This legislation would eliminate that loophole by prohibiting marriage licenses to those under the age of 18. 

Those supporting the bill said this protects children from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. 

“I ask that you please support that if I’m not old enough to vote, I shouldn’t be old enough to get married,” Sheena Eastburn testified Wednesday. “I support that we don’t make more victims to child marriage in Missouri. That we stand and be the state that says no more.”

Eastburn drove from Joplin to testify at the Senate hearing Wednesday, telling her own story of being married at the age of 15. 

“I endured mental, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse for two years,” Eastburn said. “I could not run away because I was still 16 and 17 during my marriage, and I could not get into a domestic shelter.”

She was one of a handful who testified in favor of Senate Bill 66. Brandy Dredge from St. Joseph also traveled to Jefferson City to share her trauma of being married as a minor, in hopes of changing state law. 

“It has taken me a lot of years to finally see, accept, and say I am a child marriage, domestic violence, and sex crime survivor,” Dredge said. “When I was 16, I met a 24-year-old man who lived with some boys I went to high school with, and he was a star in my teenage eyes. I believed that he hung the moon. Four months later I was pregnant, and a year after that, I was begging my mom to give parental consent for us to get married. Over the next nine years, the statistics surrounding child marriage—which are the high likelihood of poverty, lack of further education, and enduring many forms of abuse—would ring true in my marriage.”

Former senator from Sikeston, Holly Thompson Rehder, joined the group of women who told the committee why Missouri needs to join nearly a dozen other states in banning child marriage. 

“I got married at 15; my mother struggled with mental illness,” Rehder said. “I talked her into letting me get married to my 21-year-old boyfriend. Within a few months I had quit school; within five months I was pregnant. I was homeless at times; I didn’t fit in with the people my age, with the kids anymore, but I wasn’t an adult. I derailed my life because it was allowed.”

Back in 2018, the General Assembly passed legislation to raise the minimum age to get married from 15 to 16 but still required signed approval from at least one parent. Those 16 and 17 could only be married to people under the age of 21. 

“It’s hard to fathom that your parent could commit you when you’re 16 or 17 years old that they are going to sign you up for something that would last a lifetime,” Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-St. Louis, said. “When you start looking at the statistics… 88% of children were still getting married when they were 16 or 17.”

Senate Bill 66 is sponsored by McCreery. Republican Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, is sponsoring similar legislation. The two talking to reporters after the hearing about their renewed push for the legislation after it fell short of passing last year.

“As a father of three daughters, I see that we’re not what we were sixty, seventy, eighty years ago, so I think now is a time that we’ve got to update the law,” Brattin said. “I was on the other side years ago because I had family that were married at very young ages generations ago, so there are just personal feelings knowing that family had been married at young ages, but we’re not there today.”

According to the Department of Health and Senior Services, between 2019 and 2021, 225 minors were married in Missouri. Roughly 75% of those marriages were girls under the age of 18. 

The committee did not take action Wednesday but could as soon as next week.