currentsinbiology:

This is not good! ALL women need to have routine pap smears to ensure health.  Also, DO NOT think that having gotten a HPV vaccine means that you can forgo these tests. It does not mean you can’t get a different strain of HPV and cervical cancer. The vaccine has never been shown to prevent cervical cancer and it is not know how long it prevents HPV infections of those few strains it covers.

Lesbian women less likely than heterosexuals to get annual pap smears

Lesbian
women are less likely than heterosexual and bisexual women to get
timely pap smears, according to a new paper from sociologists at Rice
University.
                               

“Cancer-Screening
Utilization Among U.S. Women: How Mammogram and Pap-Test Use Varies
Among Heterosexual, Lesbian and Bisexual Women” examines the
relationship between cancer tests and sexual orientation among 2,273 lesbian, 1,689 bisexual and 174,839 heterosexual women interviewed in 15 U.S. states between 2000 and 2010.

Alexa Solazzo, a
graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Rice and the study’s
lead author, said a possible explanation for the results may be linked
to birth control. Women who use contraceptives are often required by
doctors to have annual pap smears.

“Many doctors require women who seek a birth-control prescription to
have had a recent pap test,” Solazzo said. “Women who don’t have sex
with men might theoretically have less of a need for birth control
than women who do have sex with men (i.e., heterosexual or bisexual
women). Thus, they may be less likely to seek care at an OB-GYN and
receive a pap test.”

Alexa L. Solazzo et al.
Cancer Screening Utilization Among U.S. Women: How Mammogram and Pap
Test Use Varies Among Heterosexual, Lesbian, and Bisexual Women, Population Research and Policy Review (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s11113-017-9425-5