Tearing out an abstraction requires a lot of knowledge about the abstraction and how it is used throughout the system. Over time, statistically zero maintainers

Tearing out an abstraction requires a lot of knowledge about the abstraction and how it is used throughout the system. Over time, statistically zero maintainers will have that level of knowledge about any non-trivial system. In contrast, duplicated code may be annoying, but it is usually simple to understand and maintain by anyone with knowledge of the project and the programming language. Leaky abstractions are way way way worse than no abstraction at all.