GABON’S government has proposed new laws to promote gender equality and loosen restrictions on abortion, Prime Minister Rose Christiane Raponda has announced. Parliament is expected to vote during its current session to allow divorce by mutual consent and to eliminate requirements that women obey their husbands and notify them when they open a bank account, Raponda told Reuters in an interview. "The legal changes aim to tackle the issues of violence and discrimination that women face in out society," said Raponda, who became the Central African nation's first female prime minister last year. The U.S. State Department said in 2019…