I still kinda feel like it was a bad initial idea, something that came from a creepy and misogynistic place. Here's Alan Moore on how it went down:
"I asked DC if they had any problem with me crippling Barbara Gordon - who was Batgirl at the time - and if I remember, I spoke to Len Wein, who was our editor on the project ... [He] said, 'Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch.' It was probably one of the areas where they should've reined me in, but they didn't."
If it had been left at that it would have been one of the most lamentable moments in comics history. But then John Ostrander and Kim Yale came along and saved it with feminism.