Many of the mothers have been left in limbo by a crackdown on commercial surrogacy after raids on fertility clinics across the Thai capital in the wake of the Baby Gammy scandal.

Thai health officials have urged the mothers to register with authorities so they can gain access to proper medical care.

Some hospitals have turned away mothers, worried they will be implicated in commercial surrogacy services, said Yanee Lertkrai, director-general of the Thailand’s Department of Social Development and Welfare.

“So if the mothers feel their health is at risk they should let us know,” she said.

The Medical Council of Thailand, the organisation that supervises the country’s medical system, urged doctors not to refuse care for surrogate mothers.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists also called on hospitals to provide services to pregnant women without asking for the backgrounds of their pregnancies.

“No-one should have to worry about it,” Wiboonphan Thitadilok, the college’s president told the Bangkok Post.

Authorities are finalising details of a registration process.

Concern about the surrogate mothers comes as Australian couples face bureaucratic hurdles and months of waiting to learn if they can take home their babies to Australia.

Thai authorities have declared they will have to obtain an order of Thailand’s Family Juvenile Court proving the surrogate mother has granted parental rights to them.

This is expected to take months.

Sappasit Kumprabhan, director of Thailand’s Centre for the Protection of Children’s Rights Foundation, said there are misunderstandings about Thailand’s new draft surrogacy laws.

He said some mothers are concerned newborns would be abandoned by their foreign parents who commissioned them.

But he said even though the current law provides parental rights to the surrogate mother, there was an agreement committed to and specified in advance that the surrogate child belonged to the commissioning parents.

Therefore the agreement must be respected, he said.

Australia’s ambassador in Bangkok James Wise is seeking a meeting with Thailand’s military rulers to urge them to implement transitional arrangements so the Australians will not encounter problems or delays when they attempt to take their babies to Australia.

At least three Australian couples carrying their babies have been turned back from Bangkok’s international airport in recent days.

However, at least one Australian same-sex couple successfully left Thailand with their child born to a surrogate mother in recent days.

Meanwhile, Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes, which routinely pays $200,000 for a big interview, reportedly made a $5,000 donation to an appeal to raise money for Gammy, the baby with Down syndrome who was left in Thailand by his biological Australian father David Farnell, a convicted sex offender.

Tara Brown’s hour-long interview with Mr Farnell and his wife Wendy attracted a million-plus audience.