ABC News

ABC News contributor Donna Brazile said on the "This Week" roundtable today that the Obama administration shouldn't expect to reach a compromise with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on religious institutions providing birth control to their employees given the "zero tolerance with regards to birth control" in the Catholic Church.

"You cannot compromise with the Catholic bishops on this issue.  For those of us who know Catholicism - and I'm a practicing Catholic - there's no, there's zero tolerance with regards to birth control.  There is no such thing as a compromise," said Brazile. "I had the books thrown at me when I was a little girl. There is zero tolerance.  There's only [one] thing: abstinence.  You know, sex is for procreation, not recreation."

In a reversal last week, the Obama administration announced a revised rule that will make birth control available to employees of religious institutions who want it while keeping the costs of contraception from being incurred by religious institutions. Still the move has not satisfied critics on the right.

"As Paul Ryan said to you, this is an accounting gimmick that they've done that in no way ends the complicity of Catholic institutions and individuals in delivering services they consider morally abhorrent," said ABC's George Will. "This is what liberalism looks like.  This is what the progressive state does.  It tries to break all the institutions of civil society, all the institutions that mediate between the individual and the state.  They have to break them to the saddle of the state."

Liz Cheney, the Fox News contributor and co-founder of Keep America Safe, agreed, adding she didn't think Republicans would be seen on the wrong side of the issue.

"I think there are two things here that people are going to remember," she said. "One is that, for political expedience, the president was willing to look away from the First Amendment, that the whole issue of freedom of religion was less important to this White House than placating their base on this issue."