Following up on an earlier story, it appears Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) is set to call the Senate Ethics Committee’s bluff, and allow the full Senate to decide his fate. First for a little background, two weeks ago the Senate Ethics Committee threatened Coburn with censure if he did not cease delivering babies for free:

Coburn has come under new pressure from the Ethics panel for delivering babies at the Muskogee Regional Medical Center, which changed from a public to a private institution in April last year after it was acquired by Capella Healthcare.

In May, Coburn received a strongly worded “final determination” memo threatening him with a Senate censure if he did not stop delivering babies for free. The letter prompted several heated meetings between Coburn and the Ethics Committee in June over the matter, according to two knowledgeable Senate sources.

The Ethics Committee is claims to be going after Coburn due to Senate rules which prohibit Senators from being involved in professional affiliations that would create a conflict of interest. As I noted previously, the argument over potential conflicts of interest do not pass the smell test, as this is a free service provided by a licensed physician to the general public, not a lobbying group or some other politically active entity. More likely this “final determination” is retribution for Coburn continually blocking Harry Reid’s attempts to force through billions of dollars of wasteful spending.

Rather than ending his practice of offering free health care to women, Coburn has now decided to challenge the Ethics Committee to publicly reprimand him, allowing him to appeal to the full Senate:

The Senate Ethics Committee has told Republican Sen. Tom Coburn that he’ll be engaged in a “serious violation of Senate rules” if he continues delivering babies back home in Oklahoma.

Coburn’s response: So what?

“On my own time, I’m taking care of women who have a need, and I’m going to continue to deliver babies,” Coburn, an obstetrician, told Politico. “I’m not going to stop.”

If the Ethics Committee actually gets to the point where it calls for a public reprimand, Coburn can appeal to the full Senate for a vote, and he’s betting that he’d win a vote if 100 senators were asked whether he should be allowed to deliver babies for free — especially since most of his patients are “at risk,” meaning they could be drug users, uninsured or poor patients, or women with high-risk pregnancies.

Coburn also insists that, with all the high-profile ethics scandals facing Congress — leading off with Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens’ federal criminal trial this fall — the Senate would look petty by going after someone who is donating his money and medical services to help pregnant women.

As BetsysPage notes, this would be quite an embarrassment to the Senate if it were to come to a floor vote. Imagine the political repercussions for a Senator who voted against allowing Coburn to offer free medical care to poor women.

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Congress, Features, Health Care, Politics