Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Dr. Ben Carson served as the special guest keynote speaker

Leah Anaya
For Clark County Today

The annual fundraising dinner for the Vancouver-based Options 360 Women’s Clinic was held on Thursday (Oct. 5) at the Holiday Inn at Jantzen Beach. The theme of this year’s event was “Every Story Matters.”

The event featured a special guest keynote speaker: Dr. Ben Carson. Dr. Carson is a long-time neurosurgeon who famously separated Siamese twins joined at the back of the head in 1987, among many other prestigious accomplishments. He has received over 60 honorary doctorate degrees and serves as Professor Emeritus of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush and served as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Donald Trump.

Options 360 raises money in order to assist women who come to the clinic looking for help, whether that’s help with pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, or other aspects of women’s health. CEO Pam Marchand emceed the event. 

“At Options 360,” she said on the organization’s website, “we believe every woman deserves professional, compassionate medical care and the help she needs to make confident decisions about her sexual health and her future.” 

Options 360 does not provide abortion services. Operating out of Vancouver, the clinic has served over 48,000 women. Donations can be made on their website.

Prior to Dr. Carson’s speech, in which he outlined several significant operations he performed throughout his more than 40-year career, a panel discussion was held. In addition to Dr. Carson, two others were invited on stage to answer questions. Brad Payne, director of Policy & Government Affairs for the Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW), and John Charles, Jr., president and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute of Oregon. At FPIW, Payne focuses on Christian public policy and lobbies for such. He also develops connections between legislators and Christian leaders in Washington. Cascade Policy Institute, according to its website, “develops and promotes public policy alternatives that foster individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic opportunity.”

The discussion was moderated by Kristin Sokoloff, who is a leadership coach and co-host of the podcast “The Dirty Side of Leadership.” She hosts a national talk show that discusses current events, policy, health, and leadership, and is a director of a local homeschool community in her area. Sokoloff asked questions regarding abortion, transgenderism, and other topics pertinent to health, mental health, families, and America.

Asked about some churches’ refusal to preach about abortion claiming it’s a “political issue,” Dr. Carson said the best thing one can do is “send them to the Bible.” He said he learned over his lengthy career the “tremendous value that is placed on a human life,” and that the Bible echoes that value. “As a society, as we grow further and further away from our respect for life, look what’s happened to our respect for each other,” Dr. Carson said. “I think that accounts for some of the ‘meanness’ that we see. I just got back from Europe. Talking to a lot of people over there, they think we’ve lost our minds, quite frankly. And maybe they’re right about that.”

“We talk about why we have all these mass shootings,” Dr. Carson continued, “and some people say it’s because we have too many guns. But Israel and Switzerland have more guns per capita than we do, and significantly less shootings like that. So that really tells you that this is an issue of the heart…One thing to help, it’s about passing on God to our kids. It’s about talking about God. People want to change who we are as a nation- particularly Judeo-Christian. But look what’s happened.”

Charles was asked about two-parent families and the decline of the same in current culture, both morally and economically. “What are the most critical changes that we must make as a society to face the future effectively?” Sokoloff asked. First, Charles pointed out that parents have “way more of an effect” on children’s education than schools, per se. 

“In the last three weeks alone,” Charles said, “there have been quite a few columns – three in the New York Times alone – that support the thesis that more than 90% of people who graduate high school, get married, and have kids are not poor. But the reason people do things out of order and become part of the social underclass is because of our culture. It’s really a challenge. Cascade Policy Institute is big on school choice, that’s one of the things that definitely helps. They’d basically get a money back guarantee …That’s a legislative effort that would strengthen families.”

Charles later encouraged families to take control back from the government on issues such as education. “I think the public’s appetite to keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing is diminishing drastically. I think we’re going to see more noise for change in the coming years.”

Dismantlement of the family as God designed it has brought misery to our society, Sokoloff said. She asked Dr. Carson what Christian’s should do about the issue, including the emasculating of men and the encouragement of teaching children in schools about becoming transgender. 

“God established the family in the very first book of the Bible. The two genders – man and woman – and that a man would marry a woman and cling to her while leaving his parents, and that was the family unit. This was the basis for the traditional, nuclear family. Today, out of 130 million families in the United States, only 23.1 million are traditional nuclear families. That number has drastically declined and it’s going down by the day. As a result of that, family values are not being discussed and are not being passed down to the next generation. That has a lot to do with the very rapid decline of our society. That means we have to recognize the issue and talk about it.” He went on to say that he encourages people to discuss the traditional family values laid out in the Bible; the values on which this nation was built.

Dr. Carson also said one big reason behind the success of America from the time of its foundation was because people were extremely educated. 

“If you really want to be impressed,” he said, “look up a sixth grade exit exam from 150 years ago. What you had to know to get a sixth grade certificate … most adults couldn’t pass that test today.” 

He said part of the problem is that schools have been too focused on instructing on things like Critical Race Theory rather than reading, writing, and arithmetic. He brought up a story out of Baltimore that studied 23 public high schools, where each school was assessed to see the ability of students to perform math at grade level. 

“Guess how many were competent in math at grade level? Zero. Not a single one. We have people graduating from public high schools who are functionally illiterate …This is a real problem. We have to get back to basics. The reason that’s important for people who are trying to fundamentally change our nation is because ignorant people are easy to lead astray.”

Sokoloff pointed out that in the state of Oregon, 16 times more money was spent on tampons in boys’ restrooms than was spent on talented and gifted children programs due to the Menstrual Dignity Act. “It shows how unserious politicians are,” Payne said. “It shows incredible disrespect for students and parents. They think you can’t possibly think for yourself, and you need their help to do it for you. Frankly, sometimes we need this kind of thing. Parents get mad and demand the dismantling of the education monopoly and demand a return of education decisions to themselves.” 

Payne said that it was a similar situation with the pandemic – it was bad that kids were held out of the classroom, but it did help to show a lot of parents what their kids were being taught in their schools. This made more parents get involved and demand change, he said. “I think this will lead to a big cultural shift in the next five years- getting away from central bureaucracies and getting back to power being held with parents and families.”

Around a dozen protesters who claimed to be a part of Antifa showed up at the hotel and yelled at assigned security. They pushed onto hotel property and threw rocks at security and vehicles parked in the lot while yelling obscenities and chants about women’s rights. No property was damaged, and no one was injured during the confrontations. The Portland Police Bureau was called multiple times and asked to assist, but they had a shooting and another major incident so were unable to respond.