Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers is considering an appeal of a decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Hall that prevented the state from implementing a parental notification law on abortion.

The law would have required that unmarried minor girls seeking an abortion had to wait until one of their parents or a guardian was notified, or until a Juvenile Court had waived that requirement.

Judge Hall ruled that the amended law, which he had previously objected to a year ago, still had legal failings. Among the ones he cited were a failure of the law to consider that parents could be notified by express mail or special messenger services to expedite notification. He also objected to several aspects of the Juvenile Court Rules that would have applied to girls seeking to waive parental notification. He said the rules in question in some cases jeopardized the girl's anonymity and in other cases put too much of a burden on the person providing the abortion and thereby impinged upon the girl's right to an abortion.

Bowers, in a telephone interview July 15, noted that the state had 30 days to make a decision as to whether or not to appeal the ruling, which was handed down by Judge Hall July 11. "One remedy is to go back to Judge Hall to make changes in the (Juvenile Court) Rules," Bowers said. A third choice would be not to pursue the matter, a possibility he called "perhaps not very likely."

Asked if he was disappointed by the ruling, which came after the Georgia Legislature passed an amended law designed to meet Judge Hall's objections of July, 1987, Bowers said he was "disappointed anytime we lose." After the new legislation, "we thought those objections would be met," he said. "They were not, according to the judge."

The law would have gone into effect July 1, but a challenge was filed by Planned Parenthood Association of the Atlanta Area and Planned Parenthood Association of East Central Georgia.

William Hollberg, an attorney who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of several organizations, including Georgia Right to Life, noted that although Judge Hall continued to find parts of the law objectionable, his order also spelled out ways to respond to those objections. "I think there's hope for the Juvenile Court Rules being modified to conform to his recommendations," Hollberg said.

The parental notification law does not mandate parental consent to the abortion of an unmarried, unemancipated minor, but requires notification. In his order, Judge Hall noted that the U.S. Supreme Court "has held that a statute requiring parental involvement is constitutional where it does not 'unduly burden' a minor's right to an abortion."