Pope calls IVF ‘arrogant’, sex in marriage only ‘acceptable’ way to conceive

London -  Pope Benedict XVI has called on married couples to shun artificial methods of conception, as sex between a husband and wife is the only acceptable way to conceive.

He said that methods like in vitro fertilization (IVF) for getting pregnant were simply ‘arrogance’ as he spoke at the end of a three-day Vatican conference on infertility in Rome.

The Pope reiterated the Church’s stance against artificial procreation, and told scientists and fertility experts that matrimony was the ‘only place worthy of the call to existence of a new  human being’.

“The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn’t consist in a ‘product’, but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only  biological but also spiritual,” the Daily Mail quoted Benedict as saying.

He told the specialists in his audience to resist “the fascination of the technology of artificial fertility”, warning against “easy income, or even worse, the arrogance of taking the place of the  Creator”.

He suggested that this was the attitude that underlies the field of artificial procreation.

Sperm or egg donation and methods such like IVF are banned for members of the Catholic Church.

The emphasis on science and “the logic of profit seem today to dominate the field of infertility and human procreation”, the Pope said.

But he added that the Church encourages medical research into infertility.