Von at Obsidian Wings points me to this update on the excommunication of the doctors who performed the abortion on the 9 year old rape victim in Brazil and her mother, but he is mistaken if he thinks it means that the excommunications have been rescinded. This may clarify things:
[Archbishop Rino] Fisichella stressed that abortion is always "bad." But he said the
quick proclamation of excommunication "unfortunately hurts the
credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as
insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy."
The Vatican teaches that anyone performing or helping someone to
have an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the church, and
the Vatican prelate underlined that abortion is "always condemned by
moral law as an intrinsically evil act."
"There wasn't any need, we contend, for so much urgency and
publicity in declaring something that happens automatically,"
Fisichella wrote.
Writing as if he were addressing the girl, Fisichella said: "There
are others who merit excommunication and our pardon, not those who have
allowed you to live and have helped you to regain hope and trust."
It appears that the objection is to the public aspect of it, although one gets the impression from the article that Archbishop Fisichella is disturbed as well by the utter lack of compassion on behalf of the Archbishop of Recife as well as the fact that he publicly proclaimed that the rapist stepfather would not be excommunicated, because according to him, abortion is worse than rape.
There remains the possibility that less reactionary more compassionate minds will prevail. After all, the excommunication of a Holocaust denier was rescinded . . .
Stay tuned.