Women who became pregnant were not allowed by the PDA to take time off.
The PDA (Pregnancy Discrimination Act) wouldn’t allow pregnant women to take time off work. This was an issue because not only was that less income for expecting families, but that was also less workers for this business. This caused more stress on the families and then businesses had to find new workers.
“The PDA does not provide time off to care for a new child, however, which means that many women still had to leave the workforce after giving birth. Therefore, activists began to concentrate their efforts on the passage of a family leave bill” (“The history of family leave policies in the United States”).