When we last saw Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) and her girlfriend Sandy Lopez (Lisa Vidal) on ER in February 2003, they were arguing about whether to have a child--or more specifically, about Kerry wanting Sandy to carry their child, since Kerry had just survived a miscarriage. "That's not even an option," Sandy told Kerry--not only would pregnancy interfere with her job as a firefighter, Sandy simply didn't want to do it. "I know I'm supposed to feel I want to carry a baby," she tells Kerry, "but I don't."

Fast-forward almost a year to the twelfth episode of ER's tenth season ("NICU"), when--after no mention of Kerry and Sandy's relationship in the intervening months, and with no explanation--we suddenly see Sandy giving birth to their baby boy at County General with Weaver by her side, leaving many viewers asking "When did this happen?"

Over the first half of the season, ER has devoted hours to the nuances of the relationships between the show's heterosexual characters, including Luka and Sam, Carter and Abby, and Carter and his paramour from the Congo. Even Pratt's short-lived hook-up with Gallant's sister received more attention in two episodes than Sandy and Kerry's relationship has over the entire season so far (actually, even more than Kerry alone has received all season).

After the Kerry-Sandy storyline was introduced in Season 8, ER devoted a few minutes to it in Season 9, and has ignored it altogether in Season 10 until this episode.

Changes behind the scenes are partly responsible for the dramatic decline in attention to this storyline. Writer Meredith Steihm--who was one of the driving forces behind the Kerry-Sandy storyline--left ER after the eight season to work on the new CBS series Cold Case. Laura Innes has negotiated fewer hours on the show in order to focus more on directing, and may even leave the show entirely in the next season or two. Lisa Vidal has a busy schedule (including a full-time role on the Lifetime series The Division) that leaves her little time to guest-star on ER.

But all of this makes little difference to viewers who feel bewildered and short-changed not only by the almost total invisibility of Kerry and Sandy's relationship in the last two seasons, but by the writers' apparent unwillingness to provide any continuity for the little storyline they have left.

Not only is it disorienting and inconsistent to suddenly see Sandy giving birth to a child when the two women seemed on the verge of breaking up last time we saw them, but it reinforces the sexist belief so pervasive on television that all women want to have children, even the ones who think they don't.

Last season Kerry assured Sandy she didn't think Sandy less of a woman because she didn't want to carry a child. But this is exactly the message the writers are sending by suddenly showing Sandy doing something she clearly stated was "not an option" for her.

Because everyone knows women don't really know what they want, even when they say they do.

There are very, very few women on television who are allowed to get away with saying they don't want children without being portrayed as selfish and superficial (like Karen on Will and Grace), or as uptight workaholics who have no life (like Nell on Ally McBeal). Until now, Sandy was one of the few sympathetic female TV characters of any sexual orientation who looked like she might get away with not wanting to have children without being vilified for it.

Instead, she suddenly shows up pregnant, and the viewer has no idea how she got to this point.

ER may not be able to devote more time to the lesbian relationship on the series due to Innes' and Vidal's limited availability, but when they do feature it, they should at least make an attempt to do so with some integrity and consistency, not just fall back on cliches (and sexist ones at that) and character developments that appear completely divorced from previous ones.

The fact that Kerry and Sandy are currently the only lesbian couple on primetime network TV makes the double-standards and mixed messages particularly difficult to for lesbian viewers to stomach. But when the writers demonstrate such a clear disregard for their viewers' intelligence, it's all viewers who suffer--since it's not only insulting, it's not good storytelling, either.