WordPress 2.8.6 theme options \”double quotes\” are being escaped!

I’ve got a theme options panel that allows the user to input their img tags into a text area.

However, when the options are saved, WP is adding escape slashes to the double quotes it finds in the text area.

Example:

<img src="somefile.jpg" />

becomes

<img src=\"somefile.jpg\" />

And this causes the image to fail to load

Also, on every save of my theme options, the backslashes are doubling growing in number!!!