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Susan Wood, former head of women's issues for the Food and Drug Administration, spoke to University of Wisconsin students about the misconceptions and politics associated with emergency contraception Friday.

After serving five years as the FDA's assistant commissioner for women's health and director of the Office of Women's Health, Wood stepped down in September.

She said she stepped down in protest of the organization's decision to indefinitely postpone a resolution making the "morning after pill" or Plan B available over the counter in order to decide how it would be implemented.

While she believes the majority of the FDA acted in good faith, Wood suspects higher political powers influenced the decision based on moral beliefs -- specifically, that the method is equivalent to abortion.

"[The morning after pill] does not cause abortion," Wood said. "These are exactly the same mechanisms that are available for regular birth control pills and how regular birth control pills work. This is exactly the same mechanism that is found physiologically when a women is breastfeeding and her body produces progestins that then do exactly the same thing."

Because the official plan -- outlined by the administration in 2004 -- to make Plan B contraception available over the counter limits the drug's accessibility to older females, the process was halted, she said. The then-FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford announced officials would have to go into a lengthy "rulemaking" process to decide upon its execution.

http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/1881/ click

The FDA has hurt its credibility by providing special consideration to a scientific issue based on moral and abstract allegations, charges Susan Wood, the agency's former head of women's issues, who resigned from her post in protest read the rest of this disgusting, bias, FDA article!