Well, see, casweeney? In the poorer nations like Nigeria and Bangladesh, it is understandable why teenage marriage may constitute a trap that a young girl is walking into. The rights of females are not respected in those countries, and teenage girls are less physically developed in those poor nations than teenage girls are in industrialized nations like Germany and the United States of America. Therefore, pregnancy can be a dangerous experience for them. Your article spelled it all out for its readers. However, I do have one point that I must stress to you. I really wish that all of these do-gooders who are on a mission to change the marriage laws across the world would stop comparing teenage marriages in the United States of America to those in poor countries like Bangladesh. I'm not denying that there are a few teenage marriages here and there in the United States of America that lead to misfortune. However, throughout my life, I've known adult women here in my country who have told me that they got married at 13 or 14 years old and they would do it again if they had to do it all over again. The reason that there are people in my country (the United States of America) who want to keep teenage marriage legal everywhere is because our age-of-consent laws are seriously flawed. If a 14- or 15-year-old girl has a boyfriend who may be older than what her community approves of and he is charged with "statutory rape," often girls like this refuse to testify against their older boyfriend and are charged with contempt of court. Somehow that doesn't sit well with me. Therefore, marriage is the only escape path from the poisonous tentacles of the criminal justice system for couples that fit this description. Now busybody extremists are attempting to ban all marriage before 18 years old in every state of my country. Such a move, if successful, will bring about more harm than good. Therefore, I only agree with your article insofar as teenage marriage is not a good idea in nations that are poor and where the rights of females are severely ignored.