Various anti-abortion statutes began to appear in the 1820s. In 1821, Connecticut passed a statute targeting apothecaries who sold poisons to women for purposes of abortion, and New York made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor eight years later. It is sometimes argued that the early American abortion statutes were motivated not by ethical concerns about abortion but by worry about the safety of the procedure, but some legal theorists believe that this theory is inconsistent with the fact that abortion was punishable regardless of whether any harm befell the pregnant woman and that many of the early statutes punished not only the doctors or abortionists, but also punished the women who hired them.

Many early feminists, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, argued against abortion for a variety of reasons. The former wrote:
“ Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.

The criminalization movement accelerated during the 1860s, and by 1900 abortion was largely illegal in every state. Some states did include provisions allowing for abortion in limited circumstances, generally to protect the woman’s life or pregnancies due to rape or incest.

That is actually the law in cases not involving the death penalty. The defendant gets a new sentencing hearing under the corrected procedure. SCOTUS death penalty rulings are a very big departure from American criminal jurisprudence.

Establishment clause? I’d ditch it in favor of a clause stating that government policy can neither deliberately inhibit nor deliberately advance religion in general, or single out any particular religion for special treatment. If a neutral policy happens to help or hurt religion, tough tittie.

Taxes: payment for all taxes levied, of any type, shall be rendered on Election Day, or on the day that the election would be held in off-years. Withholding would be banned.

Voting: the right to vote and hold public office must be earned (Enter Heinlein) through a period of voluntary service, but nobody who, having attained the age of majority, so volunteers may be barred from performing that service for any reason. (This does not preclude them from being kicked out before completing the service for failure to do so satisfactorily, and such service is not required to be miltiary, but it should be difficult, if not dangerous. Furthermore, anyone who receives income from the government would be barred from voting.

Any form of social welfare, if not actually banned, would be limited in scope to minimum subsistence levels.

All forms of ‘positive’ rights, i.e. the right to receive or have any form of goods or services from others (and the government, being composed of the people, counts as ‘others’) would be explicitly renounced, as any recognition of such right would result in the denial of the rights of those others.

For some laws, we already have an automatic 10-year sunset. That’s part of why the Bush Tax Cuts are set to expire in 2011.

But your “no omnibus lawmaking” reminds me of a big one that I forgot: Single statute reform! No more attaching “poison pill” amendments to unrelated laws, or making unwieldy “compromise” laws that, say, tie a tax cut to a minimum wage increase, or whatever. You’re voting on a statute, up or down, pure and simple.

That also short circuits the misleading campaign ads like “he voted to increase taxes on so-and-so” when that tax increase was just a minor amendment attached to some otherwise broadly-supported and wholly unrelated piece of legislation.

As for law-making, I’d add one rule. All federal laws automatically get a 5, 10, or 20 year sunset. Major felonies are valid for 20 years, minor crimes for 10 years, and administrative rules for 5. As each law is about to expire, congress must review & vote on each law to extend it (no omnibus lawmaking). We have far too many laws on the books that are no longer valid, or are out of date, but are not dealt with and become legal baggage we all find ourselves stuck with.