The father of Kalpana Chawla, the first South Asian woman to go into space, is campaigning to stop female infanticide in his native India. In a phone interview with the Straight from his home in Haryana, India, Banarsi Lal Chawla said he is upset with conservative Indian families who prefer having boys over girls.

Chawla, whose daugher died in the Columbia shuttle disaster along with six others on February 1, 2003, said he wants to educate people in his home country that girls can grow up to be brave and intelligent. "I had never realized that my daughter will make a history by going into space," Chawla said. "I did not even know how dangerous is the job of an astronaut. I always saw her smiling in pictures of her training."

Some Indian couples, including those who live in Canada, have female fetuses aborted to avoid future liabilities in the form of dowries. A recent study published in the Lancet, a British medical journal, revealed that India might have lost 10 million female fetuses in the past 20 years because of selective abortions.

On February 1, local members of the Kalpana Chawla Memorial Foundation held a candlelight vigil at Bear Creek Park in Surrey to commemorate the third anniversary of her death. Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, a small city in the Indian state of Haryana, where her father ran a tire factory. She studied aeronautical engineering in Punjab, and later obtained a master's degree and PhD in the United States. In 1994, NASA selected her as an astronaut and she went on her first space mission in 1997.