Quebec's college of physicians said Monday the provincial Health Ministry is putting access to abortions at risk with new standards it is setting for private clinics that perform surgeries.

In a news release Monday, the Collège des médecins du Quebec said the private clinics have operated safely for decades, and the Health Ministry's crackdown is actually putting women's access to abortions at risk.

Montreal's Alternative Clinic has already announced it will stop offering abortions after September, saying it cannot meet the province's new standards for surgery.

Three other private abortion clinics say they will have to close as well. They perform about 100 abortions a week.

The regulations that the abortion clinics say will shut them down are part of a new law that covers dozens of surgical procedures performed outside the public health system.

Montreal's public health director, David Levine, said the law was drafted because the private system had no overarching safety rules.

"So, whether you went in for cosmetic surgery, whether you went in for knee surgery, there were no norms in those environments," he said.

If the private clinics close, Levine said the public system can pick up the slack.

"I haven't the slightest hesitation to say we will fully cover all the needs of the population."

But Dr. Francine Léger, who works for both public and private clinics, said that's not true.

"We know [in] the system there's a long waiting list for a lot of surgeries, and I'm not sure they can do all the abortions," Léger said.

Léger said an abortion is nothing like knee surgery.

She said it doesn't make sense to force the clinics to build hospital-style operating rooms.

"We don't need that kind of setting to do an abortion."