In Marie Huot (1846-1930) we encounter a fascinating animal rights activist who strongly sympathized with Neo-Malthusianism but left it behind in favour of a more stringent moral theory. Considering what humans do to animals and what humans do to other humans, Huot became an early and explicit antinatalist (and is labelled as such by Francis Ronsin in his book La grève des ventres, published in 1980).

As an antinatalist, she not only transcends the denatalist neo-Malthusianism of her time, but also fills the term ‘nihilism’ with new content in a purposeful way by recognizing a consistent nihilism in antinatalism. Huot is also the inventor of the epochal term ‘Grève des ventres’ (Birth Strike), which she called for at a conference as early as 1892 and which from then on offered itself to all women who did not want to offer further victims to the orgies of human destructiveness.