This election season, WESA and PublicSource are analyzing the political advertising you’re seeing on air and online. Look for Spot Check on Thursdays.
The spot
Titled “Out of Bounds,” the 30-second ad for Democratic state Senate candidate Nicole Ruscitto of Jefferson Hills plays up the candidate’s history as a school teacher and basketball coach, showing Ruscitto in the classroom and running drills on the hardwood. Then it veers into the debate over abortion policy that has raged since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, claiming that incumbent Republican Sen. Devlin Robinson voted to ban abortions.
Ruscitto is running to unseat Robinson, of Bridgeville, in the 37th Senate District, which stretches along the western side of Allegheny County from southern suburbs to northern. The district is one of a handful expected to determine which party controls the upper chamber; the Democrats need to gain three seats to take the majority.
When did it launch? Sept. 3
How many airings? 172 as of Sept. 10, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.
How much? $177,000, as of Sept. 10, according to AdImpact.
Who’s paying? The ads were placed by Ruscitto’s campaign, which has not had to disclose its fundraising activities since mid-May. The campaign’s largest donation up to that point was a $30,000 contribution from Philadelphia-based Represent! PAC, which focuses on supporting progressive women candidates in Pennsylvania. Disclosures detailing financial activity since May are due in mid-October.
The claims
“27 years as a teacher and coach, I thought I’d seen it all,” Ruscitto says to the camera, basketball in hand. “But then, Devlin Robinson voted to ban all abortions in Pennsylvania. That’s out of bounds.”
The ad finishes with Ruscitto saying women’s healthcare decisions should be between them and their doctors, and that she is “running to protect your rights.”
The Robinson campaign responded with an ad of their own, titled “The Truth Hurts,” in which a narrator says Ruscitto is “lying” and that Robinson “never voted for an abortion ban.”
The response ad then makes a slew of unrelated claims about Ruscitto, including that she “supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for young children.”
The facts
Ruscitto’s ad does not feature any attribution for its claim that Robinson voted to ban abortion in Pennsylvania. Campaign manager Samantha Knapp said in an email to PublicSource that the claim is based on Robinson’s vote in favor of a proposed amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution in 2022.
The amendment would have added a line to the constitution saying, “This Constitution does not grant the right to taxpayer-funded abortion or any other right relating to abortion.” The amendment passed on party lines, but never gained a required second passage after Democrats took control of the state House in November 2022.
Ruscitto’s ad, and Robinson’s response, amount to a debate over the legal meaning of the proposed amendment.
Knapp argued that the amendment was “unquestionably” a ban. “His intentions and actions to ban abortion are quite clear,” she said.
Robinson campaign spokesman Dennis Roddy said in an interview that the amendment would not have banned abortion — it simply would have declared there is no constitutional guarantee to abortion.
“There is a difference between saying something is not a constitutional guarantee and banning it,” Roddy said. “There is no constitutional guarantee that you can drive. That does not mean we have banned automobiles.”
Tracy Ortega, an attorney and family law professor at Penn State University, said the amendment would not have instantly banned abortion, but abortion access advocates had reason to be worried by it.
Ortega said after the U.S. Supreme Court removed the federal constitutional right to abortion, state Supreme Courts nationwide have been weighing whether their state constitutions guarantee the right to the procedure. If the amendment was implemented, that argument would be off the table in Pennsylvania, Ortega said.
“[Abortion] would not be per se banned” by the amendment, Ortega said. “Certainly it would lay a framework for a future ban … Lawmakers could tighten restrictions and do an outright ban, and the concern is the courts would have limited oversight over that.”
The Ruscitto campaign referred inquiries to Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Policy Director Adam Hosey, who said that while the amendment may not have resulted in the kind of immediate post-Roe ban that occurred in some states, it could have created confusion and undermined access for many.
“That’s kind of anti-abortion activists’ goal, to create confusion and to [make people] think it’s not accessible in this state,” Hosey said.
Roddy said not only does Robinson not support a ban, he favors maintaining Pennsylvania’s current abortion law, which permits the procedure through 24 weeks of pregnancy.
“He supports the same commonsense law that has been on the books since 1982,” Roddy said.
Robinson told WESA’s Chris Potter in January that the status quo “is something that the district has accepted.”
In 2020, Robinson issued a Facebook post touting his receipt of “the highest rating” from Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, a group that says it promotes human life “from conception.” The post did not elaborate on Robinson’s position on the issue.
Knapp said Ruscitto supports keeping the state law as is.
The Robinson campaign response ad’s claim that Ruscitto supports taxpayer-funded “sex changes for young children” relies on an interpretation of language used by Ruscitto in a candidate questionnaire earlier this year.
In a written statement to the Steel City Stonewall Democrats, a group that backs candidates that support LGBT causes, Ruscitto said that she would “Make sure that [the taxpayer-funded Children’s Health Insurance Program] and other insurers allow [gender-affirming care] coverage.”
The World Health Organization says that gender-affirming care includes not only surgery but “any single or combination of a number of social, behavioral or medical” treatments to support a person.
A slew of studies and news reports has found that gender-affirming surgeries are rare among people under 18, and nearly non-existent in particularly young children.
Knapp wrote to PublicSource that Ruscitto “wants to get politicians out of the way so parents and kids can make their own decisions with their doctors.”
PublicSource’s access to AdImpact data on political advertising is made possible through a partnership with WESA and support from The Heinz Endowments.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
