WASHINGTON • Even as the White House is signaling a willing to compromise, battle lines hardened over the Obama administration's dictate that employers, including religious institutions, offer health-care plans that cover birth control and contraception services.

The assertion this morning by David Axelrod, senior strategist for president's re-election campaign, suggested that the White House underestimated the political furor among Catholics and others about the recent Health and Human Services rule that employers, including religious institutions, must offer health plans covering contraceptive services.

The growing dispute has provided Republicans and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney an issue that they are deploying in the early going of this election year. Romney this week called the rule "a violation of conscience."

Axelrod, speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, said: "We certainly don't want to abridge anyone's religious freedoms, so we're going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventive care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions."

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is the chief sponsor of legislation that would, in effect, overturn the rule by enabling health-care plans to omit coverage for services that "is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions" of either the employer or the beneficiary.

Speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, Blunt said: "If the administration doesn't take care of this administratively, I believe it will be taken care of legislatively. When you've got bishops, when you've got church leaders, when you've got people that have spent their lives dedicated to hospitals, schools and other institutions that reflect their faith principles, you can't just suddenly decide that those don't matter or they can be changed."

Sen. Claire McCaskill this afternoon said she is against "putting barriers" in front of women.

"As someone who believes very much that we should be preventing aboritons, I think we should try very hard to give women universal access to birth control without going into their pockets," she told reporters.

The Jan. 20 guidelines require employers to cover contraception as part of their health plans, including the so-called morning after pill and sterilization measures.

McCaskill, D-Mo., referred to the morning after pill in defending the rule. "As someone who is has spent a lot of time in the courtroom prosecuting rape cases, I think it's a pill that should be available to women. If they want to access it, it's legal in this country."

In an interview later, McCaskill deflected a question about whether the uproar had caused political problems for the Obama administration.

"I think it's a tough one either way," she said. "I think any religion should be able to profess their beliefs as to whether or not people should be able to use birth control. But ultimately this decision doesn't impact their ability to do that. It just says, as part of the health care policy, there should be access to birth control."