For the source text click/tap here: Chullin 72
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If an animal was in difficult labor and the fetus put forth its foreleg, and one severed it, to ease the mother's pain and then, since it did not help, slaughtered the mother, the remaining flesh of the fetus is ritually pure, since it has been slaughtered together with its mother. The severed limb itself is impure: if the fetus was alive, the limb was severed from a live animal and has the impurity of a dead animal (nevelah); and if the fetus was dead, the limb is actual nevelah.
If one first slaughtered its mother and then severed the foreleg, then the flesh of the fetus is impure because it touched the limb - so says Rabbi Meir. However, the Sages say that flesh is impure with a special light impurity decreed by the Sages, which would only make a difference in the case of sacrifices.
The Gemara asks: And from where does Rabbi Yishmael derive that the grave cover and the grave walls render one who touches them impure? He learned this halakha through tradition, not from a verse. The Gemara asks: And as for Rabbi Akiva, from where does hederive that a dead fetus in a woman’s womb is impure by Torah law? Rabbi Oshaya saidhe derives it from the verse that states:
“Whoever touches of a corpse, of the life of a person that died, he will be impure” (Numbers 19:13). The term “of the life” can also be interpreted as: Inside the life. What is the case of a corpse that is inside the life of a person? You must say that this is a dead fetus inside a woman’s womb.
We explore the theological implications of “inside the life.”