Husband Decides To Divorce Wife Because Of Infertility, And That Was Her Plan All Along

You’d assume that in the Western world, arranged marriages have become a thing of the past. But according to Reddit user Careful_Echidna554, they’re not.

Last week, the American turned to r/TrueOffMyChest to vent about her supposed traumatic experience in an attempt to gain ownership of it.

The woman claims her parents gave her away to a grown man while she was still in high school, and believes she would probably still be trapped in his grip if she hadn’t developed a scheme to prevent pregnancy.

Unchained At Last, a nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriage in the United States, highlights that child marriage can easily be forced because children have limited legal rights and therefore face overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to escape or resist an unwanted marriage.

Child marriage can also be a form of human trafficking. “Due to loopholes in immigration laws, thousands of American girls are being trafficked legally for their citizenship, forced to marry adult men from overseas so the men can get a U.S. visa,” the organization explains. “Similarly, American men are legally importing child brides from overseas.”

Globally, an estimated 22 million people were in a forced marriage as of 2021, and more than 650 million women alive today were married as children.

Unchained At Last reports that in the United States, around 315,000 children were married between 2000 and 2021, most of whom were girls wed to adult men. At least 66,415 of those marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a crime.

However, the situation is slowly improving.

"The United States should be a leader in the global movement to end child marriage, and we should start at home," says Dr. Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation. "Thanks in large part to organizations like Unchained At Last and its partners, we have made progress. Within the last decade, 16 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories have passed legislation to prohibit child marriage."

"The U.S. has pledged, under United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5.3, to ban child marriage nationwide by the year 2030. Keeping that promise is within our reach, but there is more work to be done, and we must be united and indefatigable in our efforts," Clinton adds.