It’s only the phrasing that I used that confused you.

You have it right: aborting the pending request is preferable. That’s what the article says, but I’ll have a look at rephrasing it with a view to making it clearer and less confusing.

I’ve rephrased it to make it clearer:

In fact, aborting is preferable to allowing the pending request to complete and then ignoring — or, worse, rendering — the stale response.