Late Monday afternoon, 42 Democratic senators and two Independents, including half a dozen 2020 presidential contenders, voted “no” to a bill that would have instituted federal legal protections for babies born alive following botched abortion procedures.

Not babies still in the womb.

Not babies in the first six weeks of pregnancy who can’t feel pain.

Viable babies, born alive.

Included among these “no” voters were Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker, all of whom have thrown their hats in the ring in a bid for the highest office in the United States of America and, ostensibly, the entire world. Only three Democrats -- Sens. Bob Casey (Pa.), Doug Jones (Ala.), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.) -- voted with the Republican majority in support of the bill.

By the time Tuesday morning broke, liberal lawmakers, abortion lobbyists and media talking heads were out in full force, spinning a national narrative that Sen. Ben Sasse’s Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would have criminally punished women who have abortions (it explicitly doesn’t), demonized them for making rare and difficult medical choices based solely on fetal anomalies (statistically untrue), and stripped them of their “reproductive rights.”

All by simply ensuring that children born alive after an abortion attempt receive the same medical care that would be given to wanted children, and mandating that doctors who intentionally withhold this care be held responsible.

This shift from supporting death sentences for unwanted, unborn children to supporting death sentences for born ones marks an important, yet entirely unsurprising, turning point in the left's public narrative.

For years, the billion-dollar abortion industry has relied on this mantra of “women’s rights” to defend inducing medically unnecessary miscarriages, poisoning unborn babies, and dismembering pain-capable infants within the womb. The tropes, “My body, my choice” and “It's between a woman and her doctor” are popular go-tos that shift the focus off the fully distinct unborn child and onto the woman who doesn’t want it. It’s a deceptively targeted line that, while bearing no basis in scientific fact, disregards the provable humanity of the child while spotlighting the woman as the sole focus, and therefore painting her as the only subject in the story that deserves society’s compassion.

And for years, that angle has worked. Abortion lobbyists, backed by liberal politicians and a massive national media machine, have built on the idea that abortion is not only about the woman – it’s all about the woman. Her rights. Her future. Her body, her choice. So long as the baby resides within the woman’s womb, the child is a write-off. An inconsequential blob of fetal tissue. A “clump of cells" with no rights.

Now, denying medical care to babies born alive after botched abortions isn't new. In fact, the abortion industry's history of allowing living infants to die or be murdered outright if they survive an abortion attempt has been well-documented for years (see here, here and here, just to name a scant few). But it's never been a talking point in the left's story; in fact, it's been a much-avoided open secret, while the focus on "women's bodies" has made up the cornerstone of the pro-abortion argument for nearly half a century.

But not anymore. Thanks to Sasse and his bill, coupled with heinous late-term abortion laws recently touted in a handful of Democrat-led states, the truth cat’s out of the bag, and there’s no stuffing it back in.

The abortion industry’s already-shaky foundation flies out the window the minute a living baby, existing entirely independent of its mother, is being actively denied medical help. Killing an already-born child by withholding life-giving care that would be quickly provided to a wanted infant can’t be passed off as “abortion” or “reproductive rights.” That ship has sailed.

“My body, my choice” becomes a non-sequitur when “your body” is no longer in play.

“My reproductive rights” stops being an arguing point once you’ve already reproduced, and the result is lying on a table gasping for air.

"Blob of cells" just doesn't pass the smell test when that "blob" has a little chest that's rising and falling.

The U.S. Senate’s rejection of this bill, and the twisted agenda of the 44 Democrats who voted against it, has nothing to do with “reproductive rights,” or protecting a woman’s autonomy or “choice.” It's not about saving her life or “terminating a pregnancy.” It never has been.

It’s about making sure the story ends with a dead infant, come hell or high water.

Hell being the most likely.