Notably, very few Democratic senators took to the floor to deliver remarks explaining their votes against the legislation. Yesterday evening, Senator Steve Daines (R., Mt.), who founded the Senate’s first pro-life caucus, led several Republicans in a colloquy to deliver floor remarks in support of the bill.

“The next bill we will be voting on tomorrow is the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” Daines said, “which mandates that if a baby is born alive following a botched abortion, the doctor must protect that baby and give the same medical care that any other baby would receive. Is that too much to ask for?”

Daines also noted that Americans support legislation to protect infants born under such circumstances, citing a survey last year that found that 77 percent of self-described pro-choice voters believe babies born alive should be medically protected.

Several other Republicans followed Daines’s remarks, including Mike Braun (Ind.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), and Ben Sasse (Neb.), the born-alive bill’s latest sponsor. But, unlike when the Senate voted on this bill last February, Democrats largely remained silent. Instead of coming to the floor to insist that the legislation was infringing on women’s health care, as they did last year, Democrats cast their “no” votes and sent out statements from their press offices explaining their votes.

When Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) objected to the legislation on the floor this afternoon before the vote, Sasse excoriated him and used his remarks to explain how Democrats and their media allies hide behind euphemisms to avoid talking about the reality of the legislation.