“A lot of debates aren’t straightforward,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) writes today about his Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. “This one is.” If Democrats can’t come together with Republicans to decide that infants that survive an abortion should receive life-saving medical attention, Sasse argues, then they have become the party of infanticide as well as abortion.

And he plans to give them the opportunity to make that choice publicly:

Under the sway of a radical abortion industry that dishes out millions of dollars in campaign donations, Democratic politicians who used to think abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” are now willingly blurring the line between abortion and outright infanticide.

In doing so, they’ve left most Americans — and most of their own party — behind. Earlier this month, a YouGov poll found that an overwhelming majority, including more than three-quarters of Americans who identify as pro-choice, oppose withholding medical care to viable infants.

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is a simple affirmation of what we all know to be true. Every human being is precious. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

If my colleagues can’t say that it’s wrong to leave a living, breathing baby, cold and alone on a table, to die of neglect, then they are not only tacitly endorsing infanticide. They are helping to create a society where some people count more than others, and where the vulnerable are always at the mercy of the powerful.

There’s another significant shift in the YouGov series, perhaps not as dramatic but certainly notable. A month ago, just a couple of days before Ralph Northam’s pro-infanticide comments, the YouGov tracking poll for The Economist put Trump’s approval on abortion at 33/43. Last week, it was 39/40, and strong disapproval dropped from 37% to 30%. That’s quite an uptick for Trump in any issue category; for abortion in his staunchly pro-life administration, that’s nearly a miracle.

Axios reports that Marist is seeing a similar shift after radical abortion bills got floated in Virginia, New York, and Vermont. The masks have slipped, and people are beginning to notice — even Democrats:

By the numbers: The poll found Americans are now as likely to identify as pro-life (47%) as they are pro-choice (47%). Last month, a similar Marist survey found that Americans were more likely to identify as pro-choice than pro-life 55% to 38%, a 17-point gap. The survey also found that 80% of Americans support abortion being limited to the first three months of pregnancy, an increase of 5 percentage points since last month’s Marist poll.

• Between the lines: Marist has been polling Americans’ attitudes on abortion for over a decade, and Carvalho told Axios this is the first time since 2009 that as many or more Americans have identified as pro-life as have identified as pro-choice.

But what Carvalho said she found most significant was that Democrats, specifically those under the the age of 45, seem to be leading the shift: This month’s poll found 34% of Democrats identify as pro-life vs. 61% pro-choice. Last month, those numbers were 20% and 75% respectively.

• Among Dems under 45, 47% identify as pro-life vs. 48% pro-choice. In January, those numbers were 28% and 65% respectively.
• “This has been a measure that has been so stable over time. To see that kind of change was surprising,” Carvalho said. “And the increased discussion [of late-term abortion] in the public forum in the past month appears to have made the biggest difference in how people identify on the issue.”

This is just a product of the radicalization of Democrats on the issue of abortion. Bill Clinton knew what he was doing when he staked out the “safe, legal, and rare” position while president. Even those who might be inclined to dispute the claim that human life begins at conception mainly assume it has to begin at birth, at the very least, not sometime between the first trip home from the hospital and potty training. Having high-ranking Democratic officials argue for death right up to labor and even past delivery makes it clear that this isn’t so much about women’s rights as it is about imposing a utilitarian view of human life on the rest of us.

Sasse will force that choice on Democrats in the US Senate and elsewhere. Sasse is absolutely correct about BAASPA; it does nothing to criminalize abortion. It requires only that human life be supported after birth no matter what the intentions were prior to it. A vote against BAASPA is a vote to sanction the murder of infants. Sasse will not let a single Senate Democrat forget it — and neither should we.