An encounter 50 years ago leads to lifetime award for Drums woman

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Maryann Lawhon talks about pro-life work during an interview at her Butler Twp. home on Thursday Sept. 10, 2026. Lawhon will receive the Life Time Achievement Award from the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. (John Haeger / Staff Photographer)

By Kent Jackson | kjackson@standardspeaker.com | Standard Speaker

PUBLISHED: September 14, 2026 at 2:16 PM EDT

Maryann Lawhon heard a faint sound in a hospital utility room and found a baby on the stainless steel counter.

That’s an abortion, she was told. Leave it.

Instead she held the boy.

“He made a fist. His finger held mine. It’s a moment that changes who you are,” Lawhon, a nurse who lives in Butler Twp., said.

She baptized the boy before he died, named him John and promised to speak for him.

That promise, made nearly a half-century ago in Morgantown, West Virginia, led Lawhon to speak about her experience at small groups, classrooms and rallies. She produced a full-length documentary “The Voice of John” and hosted more than 300 segments of a radio show with the same title. Currently, she is writing a pro-life curriculum for schools.

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Maryann Lawhon talks about pro-life work during an interview at her Butler Twp. home on Thursday Sept. 10, 2026. Lawhon will receive the Life Time Achievement Award from the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. (John Haeger / Staff Photographer)

For her efforts, the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation is presenting Lawhon with a lifetime award during a banquet on Sept. 17 at Hershey Lodge.

“I’ll get a lifetime achievement award. I’m sharing it with John,” Lawhon said.

She smiled frequently while talking about her pro-life outreach as she sat at a table in room decorated with hearts, crosses, a statue of Christ and a painting of a tree swing near a moonlit lake. The artist, a woman in her 40s, was born with Down Syndrome, a genetic condition that can be diagnosed in utero and can lead mothers to select an abortion.

Lawhon’s support doesn’t end when a baby is born.

“Womb to tomb” is her slogan, which she lived  by having her father move in with her when he was 96 for the last months of his life.

A Scranton native and nurse for 50 years, Lawhon also has been massage therapist for 20 years and life coach the past 15 years. She counsels pregnant women but also women who have had abortions.

Maryann Lawhon talks about pro-life work during an interview at her Drums home on Thursday Sept. 10, 2026. Lawhon will receive the Life Time Achievement Award from the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. (John Haeger / Staff Photographer)

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She emphasizes when she hears stories of regret. Post-traumatic stress struck after her encounter with John.

The curriculum that she is writing respects age levels.

“How do you teach pro-life to children?” she said before recalling being 4 when she put her hand on her mother’s stomach to feel the baby move.

For high school and college, the curriculum doesn’t shy away from discussions of rape, the mother’s life being at risk or tests that show the fetus wouldn’t survive. She told of one baby who lived 26 hours.

“He met his grandparents. He got a wonderful funeral,” she said.

The curriculum developed from her speeches and writings over the decades, which she and her editors are putting together like a puzzle.

Sam Lesante Jr. of SSPTV in Hazleton has helped produce videos to accompany the lessons, she said,  because young people don’t just learn from printed words.

She has ventured into other media despite a discomfort with technology.

“Do you even know what a podcast is?” asked a friend whom she enlisted to help her make one.

“The life of John” documentary that she produced in 2012 with Don Galade took them to Georgia to interview Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As they were at the airport, a person telephoned to cancel an interview, but they flew to Texas anyway and found other people to feature.

Her radio show on JMJ Catholic Radio, 104.5 FM, of the Scranton Diocese, started when a host was sick and she was asked to substitute.

Since then, she has done more 300 segments with producer Joseph McCulloch.

“I miss him,” she said of McCulloch who died Sept. 9.

On some of the shows she is joined by her husband, Ed Pane, a drug and alcohol counselor.

“Ed sings with me. The listeners love Ed,” Lawhon said.

The internet gives the show national reach, and Lawhon has recently been contacted by a group in Oregon and a little boy from Pennsylvania.

Three years ago, she returned to speak in Morgantown, 49 years after finding John at the University of West Virginia Medical Center.

“She has spoken in many areas of the state,” said Dr. Frank Polidora, who is board member for the Voice of John and  has been in the audience when Lawhon talks about finding John. “I’ve seen this a number of times. It has a big effect on young women and young men.”

Although Polidora plans to attend the Pro-Life Federation banquet he didn’t know that Lawhon was being honored.

“She’s very modest about things,” he said. “She’s gone out of her way to save lives. She’s probably saved so many lives in the world, bringing women away from abortions.”