Getting rid of Escaped characters!

[achilles]

I'm inputing text via forms to variables. How do I get rid of the extra characters inputed to escape special characters e.g.

"
Argentina\'s industrial heartland, commemorating the 32nd anniversary of a deadly labor uprising and calling attention to the nation\'s economic slump
"

ie Argentina\'s should become Argentina's

Thanks in Advance

[Anon]

htmlspecialchars(stripslashes($variable))