The volume in the abortion debate has been stuck at rancorous screaming for so long that when it gets turned down, it's disorienting, like walking outside after a rock concert and trying to hear again. So the significance may not immediately register when two House Democrats introduce legislation on July 23 aimed at reducing abortion rates. But regardless of whether their bill succeeds or fails, the broad array of supporters behind it represents a dramatic break from nearly four decades of post-Roe politics. (Read "Understanding America's Shift on Abortion.")

If that sounds like hyperbole, consider this: just three years ago, when the two Representatives, pro-life Tim Ryan of Ohio and pro-choice Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, introduced an earlier version of the legislation, they could persuade only one religious organization — and not a single abortion-rights group — to support them. Today leaders from Planned Parenthood and NARAL will be crowded elbow to elbow with Catholics and conservative Evangelicals to stand behind Ryan and DeLauro. It may not be an end to the culture war, but it looks a lot like a cease-fire. (Read "The Grass-Roots Abortion War.")

You wouldn't know from looking at the bill that it took four years of negotiation and accommodation to produce this version. Aside from its support for contraception, none of the new or expanded initiatives it contains are terribly controversial: a national campaign to teach parents how to talk to their kids about sex, efforts to educate the public about adoption, home nurse visits for low-income mothers, expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage.

Interestingly, the arduous work of getting traditional adversaries on the abortion issue to endorse the Ryan-DeLauro effort had relatively little to do with concerns about the substance of specific provisions. Instead, the bill's backers found they needed to give people on both sides time to learn to let down their guard a little after decades of skirmishes. "We had to reach a level of trust," says DeLauro. "Because so often this issue has been one about which there was nothing other than trying to score political points."

One way to encourage trust was to make changes that Rachel Laser, director of the culture program of the think tank Third Way, says were designed to "turn down the heat." Laser began her career in the pro-choice community and agreed four years ago to help Ryan craft a common-ground bill. She shouldered the task of patiently hearing out each group's concerns and turning them into a final product that could garner broad support without being uselessly watered down or split into two. When abortion-rights advocates, for example, objected to a provision to have abortion providers obtain what is called "informed consent" from patients (a requirement already mandated in all 50 states), Laser removed it. And she did the same when some of the bill's pro-life supporters complained that a section requiring homes for pregnant women to provide family-planning counseling would take funding away from Catholic group homes that don't support contraception.

The legwork paid off in the form of a final bill that is hard to oppose. A truism of Washington politics is that everybody talks about common ground but nobody likes it — at least, until they're in danger of being the only ones standing in the way. The process also inspired some participants to respond in good faith; several Catholic endorsers who do not support contraception did not let that stop them from giving their full backing to the bill. President Barack Obama provided an additional boost in his commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, in which he urged groups to come together to reduce the number of abortions. "This Administration has lowered the provocation levels," says Joel Hunter, a pro-life Evangelical who supports the Ryan-DeLauro bill. "That's allowed all of those who have traditionally focused on just one part of the agenda to begin to mature in the way we approach politics and take a chance on working with each other."