Plan B

The highly regarded women's health chief at the Food and Drug Administration resigned Wednesday in protest of her agency's refusal to allow over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception.

Assistant Commissioner Susan Wood charged that FDA's leader overruled his own scientists' determination that the morning-after pill could safely be sold without a prescription, and stunned his employees last week by instead postponing indefinitely a decision on whether to let that happen.

"There's fairly widespread concern about FDA's credibility" among agency veterans as a result, Wood told The Associated Press hours after submitting her resignation Wednesday.

The so called "morning after" pill is an intensely political drug- one that has been under constant attack and review by the right. There would be scrutiny over Wood's resignation by the right as a kind of political statement of her own. She has, however, made her intentions clear in her resignation:

"I have spent the last 15 years working to ensure that science informs good health-policy decisions," Wood, director of FDA's Office of Women's Health, wrote in an e-mail about her departure to agency colleagues. "I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended by the professional staff here, has been overruled."

It's clear that she's talking about the constant pressure by rightist moralist organizations and individuals who have exerted political pressure to end the possibility of OTC emergency contraceptives. They don't see any health benefit, or any necessity, or any reasonable need. To them, it is a farce.

To them, science and cultural need are a farce.