Posted by Maura Johnston on 02/16/2011 at 1:20 PM News

The Popdust Files: justin bieber, rolling stone

Justin Bieber’s Rolling Stone cover story is already causing outrage, despite the magazine not landing on shelves for another two days. The choice quotes posted on RS‘ blog not only reveal that he might be okay with premarital sex (“I think you should just wait for the person you’re…in love with,” he told Vanessa Grigoriadis), but they get political:

He does have a solid opinion on abortion. “I really don’t believe in abortion,” Bieber says. “It’s like killing a baby?” How about in cases of rape? “Um. Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”

Bieber’s antichoice stance shouldn’t be too surprising to anyone who’s familiar with his biography; Never Say Never has footage of him appearing on a Christian talk show with his mom and singing praise hymns in his pre-Scooter-Braun days. (Although someone should probably take him aside to discuss his “everything happens for a reason” reasoning with regard to rape.) But right-wingers might not want to embrace the Biebs as one of their own too quickly—he also told Grigoriadis that he’s pro-socialized medicine!

“You guys are evil. Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard’s baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby’s premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.”

Why would you ask a 16-year-old about thorny issues that have divided bodies politic for years, if not decades? Well, for pageviews and increased newsstand sales, of course. But Bieber’s answers to these questions also reveal that he’s a bit cannier than people give him credit for—especially in his healthcare spiel, in which he goes the “don’t you care about babies” route right away. And he might find America “evil,” but at least most of this country can agree on his distaste for “whatever they have in Korea,” right?