Legislation has recently become law in Sierra Leone forbidding the marriage of girls under the age of 18, a move that follows that of a number of other African countries.
Estimates are that millions of post-pubescent females are brides all over the African continent. Arresting this phenomenon isn't related to biology but instead means that a substantial number of Africans are adopting the culture and mores of the West, where marriage of girls is universally banned.
goodnewsnetwork.org
This isn't as cut-and-dried of an issue as it might appear. Like any other age-determined limit, the age of eighteen is entirely arbitrary and has no relationship to the physical, emotional or intellectual state of any one individual. There are no doubt 22 year-old females that aren't really ready for wedded bliss.
Additionally, child brides are generally the result of marriages arranged by their parents, sometimes of both parties, for a number of different reasons. Wouldn't it be more sensible to prohibit arranged marriages, which actually occur all over the world?
Ultimately, forbidding "child" marriages means an abrogation of freedom, the elimination of an individual choice. Freedom of choice, of a course of action that doesn't affect in any way the freedom of others, is what true freedom is all about.
On the other hand, the personal choice of a geriatric to, for instance, pilot a commercial jet aircraft, might have serious effects on uninvolved strangers, so there are upward age limits in some circumstances. But not in politics, where the aged have the fate of future millions subject to their diminished intellect and judgement.
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