A study of a group of teenagers with positive cancer smears strengthened the author's conviction that all women deserve to have cytologic screening included in their pelvic examinations. It has been a common practice to omit cancer smears in the decades where cervical cancer is less frequent. Limitation based on age ignores the fact that overt cancer is preceded by a silent preclinical phase that is curable and can be detected by cytologic screening. Among a group of 1,500 women with positive smears there were 77 who were 19 years of age or less when the positive smear was found. Despite the failure of the majority of these girls to have the indicated biopsies, 10 have already been found to have intraepithelial carcinoma (in situ) of the cervix.