WASHINGTON — Retreating in the face of a political uproar, President Barack Obama will announce today that religious employers will not have to cover birth control for their employees after all.

Instead, the administration will demand that insurance companies will be the ones directly responsible for providing free contraception.

Obama’s abrupt shift is an attempt to satisfy both sides of a deeply sensitive debate, and most urgently, to end a mounting election-year nightmare for the White House.

Women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without co-pays or premiums no matter where they work, a provision of Obama’s health care law that he insisted must remain. But religious universities and hospitals that see contraception as an unconscionable violation of their faith can refuse to cover it, and insurance companies will then have to step in to do so.

Obama will speak about his decision at 12:15 p.m.

By keeping free contraception for employers at religious workplaces — but providing a different way to do it — the White House will assert it gave no ground on the basic principle of full preventive care that matters most to Obama.