When this law was enforced it made the legal age of consent around 16. It was strongly enforced very soon after its enactment. Many young men who had gotten women below the legal age of 16 pregnant were now being brought before court and prosecuted. I thought this was a foolish thing to do because many of these young men were planning on marrying the woman. This means that they loved the woman enough to make right by her, in the sense of taking some of the social shame off of her. I feel however, that there was a greater concern that should have been paid more attention to.
Grown men, married men and well established men were rarely brought before the courts for statuary rape. This to me was a larger problem. These men were married and had kid. They would have sex with younger women to escape their families for just a short time. The problem is that if they got the girl pregnant he was not going to take responsibility for it and marry her. These men deserved to get prosecuted more then the men that were planning on getting wed soon after.
All information gathered from Hine, Thomas. The rise and fall of the american teenager. New York. HarperCollins Publishers inc, 1999. Print.
I completely agree! I would like to expand upon your points in saying that society is (in this instance, but we certainly see it in other situations as well) fitting laws to meet the desires of the "important" people. Society, juries, judges and even prosecutors live in fear of wealthy, powerful people, especially men. The point you made about men who intend to marry their pregnant girl friends is really important here. Often, these men are young. Therefore, in a sense, what the law is trying to do is keep young people from having sex, not keep older, married, established men from taking advantage of young girls. When looked at in this light, the law isn't protecting our female youth, it is protecting the ideal that young women should not have sex, unless it is to fulfill the needs of some established member of society. It is very concerning!
ReplyDeleteGreat points! Thanks for sharing!
Becca