“in the U.S., nearly every state allows at least some people under the age of 18 to marry — and as the columnist Nicholas Kristof recently pointed out in the New York Times, the vast majority of those underage spouses are girls. According to data compiled for the Times by a child-marriage abolition group called Unchained At Last, more than 167,000 people under the age of 17 married in 38 states between 2000 and 2010. And according to data collected by the Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit advocacy group for women and girls fleeing violence, 27 states set no true minimum age for marriage, and nine states set age limits below 16. Fraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained at Last, notes that in many states, people under 18 cannot retain a lawyer — which means they can’t file for divorce or fight for custody of their kids. “