FROM CHILD TO BRIDE

[DulceDecorum]

By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published December 12, 2004

BELLMEAD, Texas -- In its most forgiving outline, the love story of Liset and James Landeros has the ring of a fairy tale.
Liset and James fell in love. They defied their parents--and the law--to follow their hearts. And after many struggles and trials, they finally married.
But one harsh detail--their ages--belies this romantic formula. A slight, quiet girl with coffee-colored eyes, Liset was only 12 when she began dating James, four years her senior. At 13 she was pregnant and miscarried her first baby. At age 14 she married James to keep him out of jail; the state of Texas was threatening to charge him with the statutory rape of a minor.
<snip>
America's child brides tend to be older than their foreign sisters: Marriage records show they are usually in their mid- to late teens, not the preteens of Afghanistan or Bangladesh. And many American girls, exercising an enviable degree of choice, tend to marry out of love, not because they were railroaded into wedlock by tribal traditions or religion.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0412120359dec12,1,3445765.story


BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!!

THE BRIDE WAS 7
In the heart of Ethiopia, child marriage takes a brutal toll
By Paul Salopek
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published December 12, 2004

.....The most far-reaching injustice of child marriage by far, however, is probably its most subtle: It pries millions of young girls out of school. Confined to their husbands' homes, and cheated of the benefits of education, legions of demoralized children worldwide are condemned to lives of ignorance and dire poverty from which they rarely escape, and which they endure with numbed desperation.
"That's the most heartbreaking thing about this issue," says Micol Zarb, a spokeswoman for the UN Population Fund, or UNFPA, which monitors global reproductive health. "All the misery and pain is occurring in silence. These are just kids. They don't speak out. We never hear from them."
According to the UNFPA, at least 49 countries in the world, roughly a quarter of all nations, face a significant child bride problem--that is, at least 15 percent of their girls marry younger than age 18, the widely recognized threshold of adulthood.
<snip>
And the powerful Ethiopian Orthodox Church has long played a role in early matchmaking. Church teachings traditionally encouraged marriage before age 15, declaring that this was the age of the Virgin Mary at the Immaculate Conception of Christ.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0412120360dec12,1,2974333.story

COMMENTS?

[unblock]

1. the culture of life demands that we applaud their desire to breed early

:puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke: