Reducing unintended pregnancies also helps
slow population growth, which would allow MENA governments more time and resources to improve their health and education systems. And, it can help reduce the region’s high rates of youth unemploy- ment. If women in Egypt could successfully avoid the births that result from an unintended pregnancy, the country’s total fertility rate (average lifetime births per woman) would decline from 3.0 children per woman to 2.4. In Jordan, the average would decline from 3.6 to 2.8.4