The lifting of an excommunication requires repentance. I don't know the exact details regarding the lifting of the excommunication, but I imagine this was the sticking point.
That's fine, but a Bishop is just a man, subject to the same prejudice and pride as any other. There's nothing stopping him from refusing to lift excommunication, even if the sinner is truly penitent and remorseful. My disagreement was and still is that the sin of abortion, whether receiving, giving, or otherwise facilitating in any way should not automatic excommunication. Until you convince me why they should be excommunicated while any other murderer is not, I will continue to disagree with it on the grounds that it is an inconsistency.
Where is any evidence to support that?
It's anecdotal, since there's no articles nor documentation I have access to concerning the instances I am aware of, so, get your gotcha in. I'm going to prove my point with a bit of a tl;dr, but hopefully it gives you some insight into the real problems that Catholics face in the less civilized parts of the world, so you can develop an appreciation for all the stuff you and yours will hopefully, and most likely never have to see. There are plenty of documented cases where the Church in Colombia is extremely unfair, and out of their damned minds. Granted, the whole Church down there isn't like that, I've attended mass in Bogota a few times, and it's very nice, but there's a lot of extremist crazy in that part of the world too
COLOMBIA: Magistrates Excommunicated for Partially Lifting Abortion Ban | Inter Press Service
Colombia Catholic Church Bishop Bans Those Involved in Girl's Abortion
Colombia says priest led paramilitaries that committed atrocities
There are also the two priests, Camillo Torres Restrepo, who issued the blasphemous quote "If Jesus were alive today, He would be a guerrillero", and Manuel Perez, who promoted such "Christianly" ideals as kidnappings to extort ransom, torture, and summary executions. These men of the cloth lead the ELN, a quaint little marxist rebel group with ties to drugs, human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and a slew of human rights violations and war crimes, including killing people in hospitals, illegal executions and reprisals, planting land mines in areas populated by civilians, detonating VBIEDs that primarily maimed and killed innocent men women and children, and they amassed quite a large grouping of child soldiers.
The Catholic Church, while very staunch on excommunicating people for having anything to do with abortion, because it destroys an innocent life, regardless of the circumstances, did not issue excommunications for the "recruiters" and commanders of child soldiers. Those kids have to watch the brutal execution of their fathers and/or other male relatives who are too old, or had to do it themselves, then had to watch their mothers, sisters, aunts, and/or any other female relatives get raped and sent off to be trafficked into prostitution, drug manufacture and/or distribution, or they became unwilling organ donors. The trauma continued as they faced (some still do to this day) constant psychological and physical torment and torture, starvation, sleep deprivation, etc. until they are old enough to do the same to other families. Innocent lives destroyed and turned into agents of perpetual evil, which is arguably worst than death. Why no excommunication for that? Is that not destroying an innocent life?
You may be wondering where I'm going with this, so I'll get to it. This crap with ELN, which is only one rebel group out of many, had been going on since 1964, and it wasn't until 1999 that Archbishop Duarte excommunicated all members of the ELN. It wasn't because they killed anybody, no abortions were performed, no 9 year old boys were forced to blow their daddy's brains out with a Browning 9mm. No, they got excommunicated because they disrupted Mass and took hostages, then didn't release them fast enough for the Archbishop's liking. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the Catholic Church in Colombia has pretty much said brutal atrocities are a-ok as long as you don't terminate and remove a disgusting and loathsome product of incest or rape, or worse from a victim's body, or disturb a ceremony to kidnap some guys that are eventually all released unharmed. There's clearly a problem there, and I don't see how anyone can expect a fair shake at any diocese in that country.