QUEBEC CITY — Dozens of Canadian women who must travel to the United States for controversial abortions when they're about six months pregnant and beyond may soon have an option closer to home.

Quebec health officials said they are hopeful a newly trained doctor will set up practice in the province next year, offering a service that even staunch pro-choice Canadian doctors like Henry Morgentaler refuse to provide for ethical reasons.

"The right to an abortion is well-recognized in Quebec and Canada," Cathy Rouleau, a spokeswoman for Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard, said Friday.

"We have an obligation to get a patient the help that she needs."

Canadian women currently travel to Colorado, Kansas and Washington each year to have late-term abortions because no Canadian doctor will perform them.

The stateside procedures are paid for by provinces including British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, where 85 per cent of about 105,000 abortions in Canada are performed each year. Each late-term abortion costs about $5,000 US.

Morgentaler said he has concerns about late-term abortions.

"We don't abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies," Morgentaler said from his Toronto clinic.

"Around 24 weeks I have ethical problems doing that."

Morgentaler said the late-term abortions are mainly performed on women who have learned of severe birth defects during tests performed late in pregnancy and on teenage girls who have tried to hide their pregnancy.

"What we do at our clinics is if we have a problem like that we usually council the woman to continue the pregnancy and put it up for adoption if she is unable to care for it," he said.

Msgr. Marc Ouellet, bishop of the Quebec City archdiocese, said the Quebec government would be better off spending money assisting mothers to carry their children through to adoption.

"It's easy to see it's an abomination when someone reaches a certain number of months, we can see it's killing a human being," Ouellet said.

"But why do we draw such subtle distinctions? What's the difference of a few months? The whole thing is unacceptable."

Last year in Quebec, 30 women travelled to the United States for abortions after they were 22 weeks pregnant. About 31,000 abortions are performed in Quebec each year.

Morgentaler said about 15 women make the trip from Ontario each year. A British Columbia health department official said no statistics are kept but the province sends a handful of women to Washington every week.

A Statistics Canada survey of abortions in 2001 showed 96.7 per cent were completed before 16 weeks of pregnancy.

Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard defended the late-term abortions, saying the decision isn't made lightly by women and their doctors. Abortions are riskier and more complicated later in pregnancy.

"It is extremely hard for a woman to have a late abortion and also hard for the doctor that performs it, both psychologically and other ways," Couillard told CBC radio.

He said the late-term abortions are often "related to congenital malformations but also sometimes for other reasons."

Debate has raged in the United States where a handful of clinics offer late abortions and President George W. Bush has tried to ban them. The ban has been struck down in three lower courts and will likely be settled by the United States Supreme Court.

Canada has gone without a law on abortion since 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the law severely restricting the practice.

Canadian women have sought late-term abortions in the United States for years. In 1989, a Quebec woman whose boyfriend went to court to block her abortion had the procedure done in the United States when she was about 22 weeks pregnant.

The Canadian Medical Association sets guidelines for doctors, suggesting pregnancy should be terminated before the fetus is viable. The CMA says a fetus can be viable at 500 grams or 20 weeks.

Access to abortion varies by province, with each setting rules for funding.

Morgentaler said he does not see a need for rules on late abortions, despite his personal ethical opposition to them.

"There are already more or less rules, most abortions are done much before they reach 24 weeks," he said.

"Most are done at six to nine weeks. Most women know the earlier they come the better it is for them and the less it is a question of having to deal with a human fetus."