Before the Affordable Care Act, I worked two jobs to support my family. At one, I partnered with my husband to start up our sustainable design and building firm. This was our dream, our future. But because I couldn’t find affordable health insurance as a small-business owner, I needed a second job to make sure we had access to health care.

So I worked a full workweek away from our business, commuting from Arundel to Portland every day while my husband took the lead running our business.

Between the commute, my work during the day at the office and my work on nights and weekends growing our business, raising a young child and preparing our home for a second child, I was exhausted.

Then came the ACA. Our kids could see the doctor without us breaking the bank, and I could leave my day job and focus full time on our business.

Within a year, our company’s gross annual revenue increased fivefold. We went from burning ourselves out to just get by, to really seeing our business take off.

Even better, I was able to spend more time with my kids, while making real progress on the goals my husband and I had been talking about since we dreamed up the idea for our business.

The ACA gave me the security of knowing that my family could access quality health care and the freedom to get our family business on solid footing.

We’re now able to go beyond providing for our family to help create and sustain local jobs. Our firm works with at least 30 subcontractors: carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other skilled workers who count on us for projects. In helping us grow our business, the ACA has helped us create work for our neighbors and contribute between $500,000 and $1 million each year to the local economy, just in subcontracts alone.

But it pains and terrifies me to see politicians still doing whatever they can to sabotage our health care. We’re clearly not alone in that fear – that’s why health care was voters’ No. 1 issue this election. And health care was a key reason that Democrats regained control of the U.S. House – with Maine electing Jared Golden over Bruce Poliquin to join Chellie Pingree as our two Democratic members of Congress and in the election of Janet Mills as our governor.

But even with these victories for health care, there is much at risk.

In Texas, a federal judge has ruled in favor of a handful of Republican state attorneys general and Maine’s outgoing Republican governor, deciding that the whole law should be invalidated. That includes not just the pre-existing condition protections but also the MaineCare expansion we voted for, and more.

If this decision goes into effect, it will be devastating for small-business owners like me, and now it could even head to the Supreme Court.

But it’s not too late to protect the ACA. I urge our representatives in Congress and Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins to further the fight to protect Maine and our health care by pushing for bipartisan legislation that protects not only pre-existing conditions but also the entire law from further political attacks. In a very real sense, our livelihood and the livelihood of many of our neighbors in Arundel, like so many other Mainers, are in the hands of federal judges until our representatives take action to further protect our access to affordable care.

I implore Sens. King and Collins, today, not to shirk their responsibility to protect it once again, this time from the threat of being dismantled by the courts and the executive branch. They must look out for the interests of their constituents and demand that the Supreme Court not tear health care away from millions of people like me who need it.