There is a very practical reason, which was the whole point of issue11610. Descriptors are should declare themselves abstract when they are composed of abstract methods. If you have a property with an concrete getter but an abstract setter, the property should declare itself abstract until such time as it is provided a concrete setter. If we allow __isabstractmethod__ to be settable by @abstractmethod, it undermines the whole scheme of descriptors delegating their abstractedness to the methods of which they are composed.