The Church is the archetypal dragger of feet. The changes you refer to are reluctantly yielded and are the Church's way of stringing the flock along. There will never be significant changes to its stance on the sine qua non major sexual issues but tweaking around the edges will always prove useful and heartening to the Church's members who will naturally pounce on any chink of light. As for abortion, I remind you that the woman who told us that abortion is the biggest threat to world peace is still lionised by the Church and is but a single miracle away from sainthood. We won't even mention her horrid institutions and her sucking up to vile dictators.