[quote=@AndyC]
<Snipped quote by Lord Wraith>

Blame Gail Simone.  She was so indignant over how 'harmful' [i]The Killing Joke[/i] was to Barbara that she decided to undo it and remove years of character development, turning her back into just another Bat-kid and ultimately damaging the character far more severely than any amount of bullets through the spine.
[/quote]

I don't think that's actually accurate.  Gail Simone did a ton of character work with Oracle. 


When the New 52 rolled around editorial wanted to undo all of that along with the character development Simone herself did on Birds of Prey.  Simone's options were basically let this happen under someone else's watch.... or try and control the damage herself. 

Personally, the better option probably would have been to leave the book in disgust and then when Babs book got panned, then ride a similar wave of sentiment for the old Barbara and have her get brought back with Wally West and the OG Superman...but it's hard to blame her for not knowing it was a possibility.