Tht article doesn't mention the majority of those marriages between 17 year old female "children" marrying male "adults" (that are 18, 19 or 20 years old).

Children versus adults is a common framing, that is repeated by even the less biased sources such as the BBC or PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interactive/child-marriag...

Crossing a legal line from a "child" of 17 to an "adult" of 18 doesn't have the implications about real world differences in wisdom we might hope for.

If you bucket all the marries this law would affect, the 50 year old marriage is a far outlier. Most of the marriage gaps for these minors are < 1-2yrs.