War Prompts Planning for Future Families : Coping: As men face deployment, couples turn to sperm banks.

The Camp Pendleton Marine wanted to spend as much time as possible with his wife after getting 36 hours’ notice that he was shipping out to the Persian Gulf.

But he made time to drive to a medical lab near San Diego State University where he entered a first-floor office, checked in with a receptionist and took a sterile collection jar into the men’s room.

A half hour later, he and his wife were en route home, with his sperm safely stored.

If he didn’t return from the war, he reasoned, his wife could have the family they had always dreamed about.

As war rages in the Persian Gulf, some sperm banks in California report that inquiries and deposits have increased, the result of military men who fear they might be critically injured or die in battle.

“In the last four months, we have gotten about 200 to 300 calls from soldiers,” says Sharon Coe, director of the San Diego office of the Fertility Center of California. She says 100 have shown up for appointments. Before the war, there were about two appointments a month from military personnel, she says.

The Gulf War marks the first time that sperm banking is widely available to U.S. troops during wartime, in part because commercial sperm banks are a relatively recent development.

“Vietnam soldiers didn’t have the same options,” says Dr. Cappy Rothman, chief of urology at Century City Hospital and co-founder of the California Cryobank.

For some men, the decision to store sperm before going to battle might quell anxiety, says Gary Emery, a Los Angeles psychologist. “It is a way for some men to take action when they are feeling helpless, a way to leave a part of themselves behind, a way to find meaning in their life.

“During World War II, some women would get pregnant before their husbands went overseas,” says Emery, who suggests sperm banking may be today’s equivalent.

Dorothy Burke’s husband, Elmer Molique, was a bomber pilot during World War II. Before he was scheduled to go overseas, they talked about the possibility of her becoming pregnant.

“He said ‘I don’t think it’s fair to leave you with a child,’ ” the 68-year-old Whittier woman recalls. “I told him, I would want a part of him if anything happened.”

Her husband died in a training accident in New Mexico in January, 1943. Two weeks later, she learned she was pregnant with her daughter, Julie Ann.

“The minute they put her in my arms, it was like looking in his face. For me it was the best thing ever. I’d do it over again,” says Burke, who remarried and had three more children.

Most calls to sperm banks are from young couples who have not yet started families; some are from unmarried or older men. About 50% of the military calls are from men, sperm bank directors say, the rest from wives or girlfriends.

“We’ve seen a marked increase (in calls from military couples) over the past couple of weeks,” says Vincent Wayne, chief operating officer of the California Cryobank in Westwood.

Several other sperm banks throughout the state also reported a recent increase in such calls, which they attributed to inquiries from military men anticipating deployment to the Middle East.

Sperm banks charge a range of fees. At least one--the California Cryobank--is offering a special rate to military men, reasoning that the war is financial hardship enough. The bank’s three branches are offering semen testing and six-month storage for $90, Wayne says, instead of the usual $300.

California Cryobank is talking with officials at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside to determine the demand for their programs. “If quite a few service people in one location express an interest, we may travel there (to collect specimens),” says Wayne.

In the past few weeks, military couples have poured out their anxieties in phone calls to sperm banks, whose staff members say they often are greeted with tearful conversation. “Wives often say, ‘I’d like to get my husband in as soon as possible,’ ” says Janet Rodriguez, office manager for the California Cryobank.

One Marine wife--who spoke on the condition of anonymity--says she made an appointment without telling her husband, who was due to leave for the Middle East.

“I wanted him to (donate sperm) because I don’t want to have an only child,” says the 26-year-old mother of a 14-month-old son. “I went home and said, ‘Guess what?’ And he said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I was really disappointed and still am. His first reaction was, ‘Men don’t do that.’ But two of his concerns are whether I could financially manage to raise two kids and whether I could handle working and raising two kids.”

Many men are uncomfortable talking about sperm banking, says Ronald Malashock, a Camarillo psychologist and Navy consultant.

Some men have second thoughts once the appointment is made, says Coe of the Fertility Center of California. Some ship out more quickly than they thought and can’t keep the appointment. But others, she speculates, “get superstitious. It begins to sound too final. Many think they will jinx things (if they donate sperm).”