Non-governmental organizations, women’s rights advocates, and lawmakers from both parties spent years developing and lobbying for the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010,” which the House failed to pass in a vote Thursday. The bill failed even though 241 Congressmen voted for it and only 166 voted against, because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) brought it up under “suspension of the rules.” This procedure has the advantage of not allowing any amendments or changes to the bill, but carries the disadvantage of requiring two-thirds of the votes for passage.
Even still, supporters in both parties fully expected the bill to garner the 290 votes needed — right up until the bill failed. After all, it passed the Senate unanimously Dec. 1 with the co-sponsorship of several Republicans, including Appropriations Committee ranking Republican Thad Cochran (R-MS), Foreign Relations Committee member Roger Wicker (R-MS), and human rights advocate Sam Brownback (R-KS).
If passed, the bill would have authorized the president to provide assistance “to prevent the incidence of child marriage in developing countries through the promotion of educational, health, economic, social, and legal empowerment of girls and women.” It would have also mandated that the administration develop a multi-year strategy on the issue and that the State Department include the incidence of forced child marriage during its annual evaluation of countries’ human rights practices.
Incoming House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) first argued that the bill was simply unaffordable. She objected to the cost of the bill, which would be $108 million over five years, and criticized it for not providing an accounting of how much the U.S. was already spending on this effort. The actual CBO estimate said the bill would authorize $108 million, but would only require $67 million in outlays from fiscal years 2011 to 2015.
Regardless, the supporters still thought the bill would pass because House Republican leadership had not come out against it. But about one hour before the vote, every Republican House office received a message on the bill from GOP leadership, saying that leadership would vote “no” on the bill and encouraging all Republicans do the same. The last line on the alert particularly shocked the bill’s supporters: “There are also concerns that funding will be directed to NGOs that promote and perform abortion and efforts to combat child marriage could be usurped as a way to overturn pro-life laws,” the alert read. The bill doesn’t contain any funding for abortion activities and federal funding for abortion activities is already prohibited by what’s known as the “Helms Amendment,” which has been boiler plate language in appropriations bills since 1973.
The main author of the bill was Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), who was incensed when the bill failed in the House. “The action on the House floor stopping the Child Marriage bill tonight will endanger the lives of millions of women and girls around the world,” Durbin said in a Thursday statement. “These young girls, enslaved in marriage, will be brutalized and many will die when their young bodies are torn apart while giving birth. Those who voted to continue this barbaric practice brought shame to Capitol Hill.”
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 60 million girls in developing countries now between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before they reached 18. The Population Council, a group focused on reproductive and child health, estimates that the number will increase by 100 million over the next decade if current trends continue.
To read more: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/17/how_ileana_ros_lehtinen_killed_the_bill_to_prevent_forced_child_marriages