Controversial podcast host Joe Rogan came out swinging in a heated conversation about abortion rights with guest Seth Dillon, CEO of right-wing satire site Babylon Bee.
On Tuesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” exclusively distributed on Spotify, Rogan hosted Dillon in a wide-ranging discussion about American political culture. (The episode is available at this link.)
Among other topics, the duo discussed the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, which ended the constitutional right to an abortion in the U.S. after nearly 50 years. Rogan argued, “There’s also women who have been raped, who should not have to fucking carry some rapist’s baby. There’s women who have been sexually assaulted before the age of 14.”
Dillon (via Mediaite) responded that “there are people who have been born of rape and are alive right now and are pro-life and they go around speaking, talking about how ‘I had a right to live’ and they will go out there and make an argument, a pro-life case.”
Rogan pushed back: “You don’t have a right to tell a 14-year-old girl, she has to carry a rapist’s baby.” He follow up by saying, “Like, you don’t have the right to tell my 14-year-old daughter, she has to carry her rapist’s baby. You understand that?”
The two went back and forth on this point. Dillon concluded the debate by saying, “I don’t think two wrongs make a right… I don’t think murder fixes a rape.”
The Babylon Bee describes itself as “the world’s best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims. We write satire about Christian stuff, political stuff, and everyday life.”
Rogan has previously expressed general support for abortion rights — but has called it a “complicated issue.”
“It gets weird when the baby gets like six months old,” Rogan said in a May 4 episode of his podcast. “I know that some states [allow] late-term abortions and sometimes you need one for medical reasons, right? The woman could die if she gives birth. Like, it’s a decision that people have to make.” He added, “I am 100% for a woman’s right to choose. But as a human being, just a person observing things, there’s a big difference between a little clump of cells and a fetus with an eyeball and a beating heart.
The exchange came after Rogan last month pushed back against claims that he’s a “secret conservative.” On the July 23 episode of his podcast, he said GOP opposition to gay marriage is one reason he’s not a conservative — and that he is “a bleeding heart liberal” on several issues, including abortion. Rogan also recently said is not a supporter of Donald Trump and has turned down Trump’s requests to appear on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” consistently ranks No. 1 on Spotify’s U.S. podcast charts. The popular podcaster’s deal with Spotify is worth over $200 million.
Rogan came under fire this year for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccine, prompting a boycott by Neil Young and a few other artists. Rogan alsoenraged L.A.’s unhoused advocates after he told guest Tom Segura that “Maybe you should just go shoot the homeless people.”
He also faced a backlash from Spotify users and artists over his use of the N-word in past episodes of his podcast. In February, Spotify pulled 70 episodes “The Joe Rogan Experience” from the platform, dating from 2009 to 2018, which the company said it removed those at the request of Rogan and his team after talking about his “racially insensitive” language in some episodes.
