Granite State Times

Twenty-two-year-old New Hampshire State Rep. Cassandra Levesque (D-Barrington) has committed to outlawing child and teen marriage in the state.

She was elected to New Hampshire's House of Representatives in 2018, representing the Strafford 4 District.

"A hundred years ago, women were still getting married young. Now we understand that kids need to be kids. They need to be able to grow up, because if they're thrown right into adulthood, they tend to sink versus swim," Levesque told Politico. 

NH Rep. Cassandra Levesque | Twitter

Though the effort to ban underage marriage has been successful for six states -- Delaware,  New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island and New York -- it remains legal in most other states, nine of which do not require a minimum marriage at all, according to Politico.

A U.S. Census American Community Survey estimated that there were nearly 88,000 married teens between 15 and 17 nationwide in 2019. Levesque initially took on the task at a Girl Scouts conference in 2015, when she found out girls in New Hampshire could get married at the age of 13. The age has since been raised to 16 by Gov. Chris Sununu (R).

Now in her second term, Levesque plans to run again as a pledge to her commitment. This time around, her strategy will be to vocalize the consequences of child marriage, which include high divorce rates and a lack of advancement in academic and professional milestones.

"A couple of representatives have said, 'I got married young, and I'm still married to them, and it was a good marriage,'" she told Politico. "And I said, 'That's really great, [but you] are the 20%, versus the 80% who end up in situations that they wish could've been stopped."