Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a reason why something as important as openssl is not being backported to keep up with the most recent versions?
Compatibility with other libraries and testing effort. You end up back porting everything. Ubuntu backports the fixes them instead (i.e. Ubuntu's 1.0.2 will be patch with CVE fixes going forward instead of backporting 1.1 wholesale).
To enforce that, a policy of version freeze+backport of bug/security fixes is almost always necessary as very few upstream projects will maintain separate branches and have a clear policy about API/ABI breakages.
(OpenSSL is actually somewhat of an exception in that regard).