Child brides tell NBC's Megyn Kelly: Missouri shouldn't allow 15-year-olds to marry

Two Missouri women, married at age 15, weighed in Friday on NBC's "Megyn Kelly Today," speaking against the state's child bride law.

The women — Ashley Duncan, now 24 and living in Steele, Mo., and state Rep. Holly Rehder, a Republican from Sikeston, near the Bootheel — were featured in the Kansas City Star's recent series on child marriage.

Missouri possesses the most lenient law in the nation allowing 15-year-olds to wed, requiring only one parent's signature, even if the other parent objects.

Both Duncan and Rehder regret being allowed to marry so young. Neither of their marriages lasted.

They also support a proposed new law now before the Missouri Senate that would prohibit marriages of anyone under 15 while requiring a judge to approve marriages of 15- and 16-year-olds.

"Getting married at a young age is how I saw my way out," Rehder told Kelly. "Getting married at 15, you don't really know what you want."

Rehder was 15 when she married her 21-year-old boyfriend. She spoke, as she did in The Star, of being raised in a disruptive home. Shortly after she was married, she dropped out of high school to care for a baby and for her mother, who was severely injured in a car wreck. Eventually, Rehder would earn both her high school diploma and college degree, as she and her second husband built a successful business.

Duncan recounted her tale of being pulled off a school bus as a pregnant freshman, told by her aunt, who was her guardian, that she was going to the courthouse to marry her baby's father.

"Would you have liked to have had it be illegal for you to say 'I do' on that day?" Kelly asked Duncan.

She responded: "Definitely. Yes. It shouldn't be allowed for 15-year-olds to get married."

Kelly next asked Duncan if she had any advice to girls in similar positions, perhaps pregnant, young and thinking of being wed.

"If you're 15 and you're in a relationship you think is going to last forever," Duncan advised, "you could at least wait until you're 18 to get married."

"That's right," Kelly said. "There's no rush."

This story was originally published April 6, 2018 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Child brides tell NBC's Megyn Kelly: Missouri shouldn't allow 15-year-olds to marry."