“The term does not speak to the legal circumstances of a birth, merely to its location.”
Huh? How could the location you were born make you a citizen without “legal circumstances” coming into play? Law controls what country the location belongs to, as well as the legal status of your parents. You can’t very well be born a U.S. citizen without being born on U.S. territory and without either one or both of your parents being citizens or your parents being subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. law.
One is a "native" of the place where one's "nativity", i.e., one's birth, occurred. Of course, in most cases that makes one a citizen of that place, although I dispute this interpretation for so-called "anchor babies". So, I grant your point that "native" is freighted with legal considerations and I could have worded that differently. My point, however, is that there is a persistent tendency to confuse "natural born" and "native born". They are not the same. I also believe that there is a calculated effort to propagate this confusion as a way to "prepare the ground" should it ever come to the Supreme Court.