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 breast feeding 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.

Wood denounced this decision as unusual and unwarranted, considering many other drugs plans, such as prescriptions to help people quit smoking, have been introduced over the counter without such rulemaking.

In the past, Woods said the process has been reserved for issues such as mammography center regulations and can take years.

"Every time the FDA approved these dual-status products, they just did it," Wood said. "The pharmacists figured out how to handle it, the prescribers [sic] figured out how to handle it, it's not necessarily the FDA's job."

Wood added it was particularly interesting of Commissioner Crawford — who has since stepped down — to place the issue into rulemaking after a strong majority of the FDA found the drug carried no serious health issues.

"All 28 members of the [safety] advisory committee … agreed, 'this is very safe, it's a one-time use. It's a very safe product [and] this is very appropriate,'" she said.

Other committees within the FDA also found the drug appropriate for over-the-counter sales, Wood said, and "no one" knew about Crawford's decision until just before it was announced.

"They had no idea this was the answer until extraordinarily late in the process," she said. "They didn't have a clue until very shortly before this decision came down."

And, according to Wood, the manner in which the decision was made is unprecedented.

In light of her resignation and the Plan B controversy, Wood said the FDA has hurt its own invaluable credibility by providing special consideration to a scientific issue based on moral and abstract allegations.

"You will count on the FDA to do its job properly," she said. "You can assume the information provided to you is based on the best interpretation, at the time, based on science and medical evidence and not on anything else."

After hearing Wood's speech, UW senior Leslie Terdiman said the FDA's handling of emergency contraception is "appalling," adding she worries moral opinions within the Wisconsin Legislature may prohibit the medication from University Health Services.

"It's absolutely ridiculous because one has nothing to do with the other," she said. "They probably think that [birth control pills are], you know, going to make girls and guys … have sex more rather than stick to abstinence, which is ridiculous because instead it will help [cause] unwanted pregnancies."