Was the Catholic Church EVIL when it permitted* (did not excommunicate) women who had abortions prior to the 3.5 to 4.25 months of pregnancy (the Quickening)
This is why I have a hard time taking your philosophical posts seriously. This is not at all an attempt to figure out the truth, it's a bullshit gotcha question, and you are falling into fionwe's behavior of refusing to actually address the other side's issue.
Sounds like a you problem for I am not going around policing other peoples behavior, instead I am a reactive force when other people are policing my or other peoples behavior and then I call out the bullshit.
You do not see all of me, trust me (which you do not have to do) I am obsessed with truth, but to speak all my thoughts into the world would be going long. Thus you are not privy to them 
So yeah in your mind I may be a person who plays gotcha but that is not the entirety of me. Sounds like a problem of you.
Abortion is murder. It is not heresy or disobedience to the hierarchy of the Church. If murderers are being excommunicated, so too should abortionists. On the other hand, there is the question of exactly where the crime of a mother who solicits infanticide falls. Undoubtedly many of them are every bit as guilty as those who perform the procedures, but there is also the issue of erring on the side of mercy and compassion for people who might be confused. In the case of a medical professional sworn to do no harm, there is no such excuse.
Excommunication is not the automatic punishment for mortal sins. On the other hand, the Church has always held that abortion is a mortal sin, and that someone who commits, approves, shares in, permits, etc such a sin, is liable for it and will be damned without sincere repentance and efforts to make amends. Meanwhile, people have been excommunicated for actions that are not inherently sinful. Furthermore, the Church has walked back executions, but not what sins are.
https://theoutline.com/post/8536/catholic-history-abortion-brigid
Before the 1580s I can find dozens of Catholic scholars, bishops, etc that had takes on abortion and where to draw the line when it became a mortal sin. When is the quickening, when is ensoulment, etc? They these Catholics disagree even if they agree (mostly) there is a line when it becomes murder.
Likewise before the 1580s they will consider other issues about the life of the mother and so on.
Pretty much it was not a universal consistent issue where each location in time and place will have a bishop who will adjudicate this. Likewise people were doing all the time chemical / herbal abortions.
Pope Sixtus the Fifth made it an international issue* with its Papal Bull in the 1580s, creating a consistent standard for all places that were Catholic and were observing. Likewise the next pope (Gregory the Fourteenth) reversed him / clarified saying abortion is permissible if it occurred prior to month 5.5 of the pregnancy.
*put another way it was an issue of hierarchy for there were all those Protestants popping up and questioning the doctrines of the church. Of course the Protestant Reformation was ongoing and this is now 70 years after the 95 thesis.
And starting in the 1860s** it became one of the main issues of the church and there has been dozen of changes reaffirming (but with new logics) abortion always bad, and pretty much there is almost never an exception it is permissible. Note there were also other main issues of the church that became prominent during that period.
**I wonder what was happening in 1859 to 1870? Oh yeah it was the unification of Italy, the fall of the Papal States, and the First Vatican Council of 1869 to 1870
Yet if it’s clear cut why all these logics are needed? Are they self evident that all Catholics do and allow, or are they only followed when the hierarchy makes it absolutely clear with their logics, logics in words that most people could not read, they just took as true as matters of faith.
*NM*